fr$f 



{LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.! 



f UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. { 



PRESENT FROM A PASTOR 



TO HIS YOUNG PARISHIONERS; 



3n <&ett CHscottras; 



URGING UPON THEM AN 



EARLY AND EARNEST ATTENTION TO RELIGION. 



BY JAMES FLINT, D. D. 



V 

BOSTON: 
WILLIAM CROSBY, 

118 Washington Street, 

1844. 



35V* si o 
• T5 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, 
by William Crosby, in the Clerk's Office of the Disirict 
Court of Massachusetts. 



J. WRIGHT, PRINTER, 

3 Water Street. 



CONTENTS. 



DISCOURSE I. 

PAGE. 

A BRIEF STATEMENT OF SOME OF THE EVI- 
DENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. - 1 

John xx. 29. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because 
thou hast seen me, thou hast believed ; blessed are they that 
have not seen, and yet believed. 

DISCOURSE II. 

RELIGION NECESSARY TO YOUTH AND TO ALL 
ERAS AND CONDITIONS OF LIFE. - 50 

1 Kings xviii. 25. But I, thy servant, fear the Lord 
from my youth. 

DISCOURSE III. 

CONSIDERATIONS THAT ADDRESS THEMSELVES 
TO THE YOUNG AS MOTIVES TO EARLY RELI- 
GION. - - 77 

Ecclesiastes. xu. 1. Remember now thy Creator in 
the days of thy youth. 



IV CONTENTS. 

DISCOURSE IV. 

CONSIDERATIONS THAT ADDRESS THEMSELVES 
TO THE YOUNG, &c. CONTINUED. - - - 104 

Ecclesiastes xii. 1. Remember now thy Creator in the 
days of thy youth, whilst the evil days come not, nor the 
years draw nigh, when thou shalt say I have no pleasure in 
them. 

DISCOURSE V. 

A MARK SET UPON THREE VICES FOR THE RE- 
PROBATION AND AVOIDANCE OF THE YOUNG. 155 

Prov. viii. 32. Now, therefore, hearken unto me, O ye 
children ; for blessed are they that keep my ways. 

DISCOURSE VI. 

THE YOUNG CAUTIONED AGAINST THE SEDUC- 
TIONS OF ILLICIT PLEASURE AND SKEPTI- 
CISM IN RELIGION. - 188 

Ecclesiastes xi. 9. Rejoice, O young- man, in thy youth ; 
and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and 
walk in the ways of thine own heart, and in the sight of thine 
own eyes. Bid know thou, that for all these things God will 
bring thee into judgment. 

DISCOURSE VII. 

THE YOUNG EXHORTED TO BE SOBER-MINDED. 219 

Titus ii. 6. Young men likewise exhort to be sober- 
minded. 



CONTENTS. V 

DISCOURSE VIII. 

GOD DESTROYS OUR EARTHLY HOPES TO MAKE 
US APPRECIATE THE HOPE AND LIVE AS BE- 
COMES THE HEIRS OF IMMORTALITY. - - 246 

Job xiv. 19. Thou destroy est the hope of man. 

DISCOURSE IX. 

THE VOICE OF NATURE IN AUTUMN. - -271 
Psalms xxxix. 14. And their beauty shall consume in 



DISCOURSE X. 

CHARACTER OF TIMOTHY PICKERING, A MOD- 
EL FOR THE YOUNG POLITICIANS OF OUR 
COUNTRY. - - 297 

Deuteronomy xxx. 7. His eye was not dim nor his nat- 
ural force abated. 



PREFACE. 



The discourses contained in this little volume 
were written without a thought of printing 
them. With the exception of the first and the 
last, they were composed and delivered, as oc- 
casions called them forth in the ordinary rou- 
tine of the writer's ministrations from the pul- 
pit. The substance of the first was delivered 
in Harvard University chapel, as the Dudleian 
Lecture, and the last upon an occasion of which 
the discourse itself speaks. There is some 
repetition of topics in the intermediate dis- 
courses. The nature and effects of early hab- 
its are several times adverted to ; and the 
writer thought of leaving out portions of some 
of the discourses to avoid these repetitions. 
But finding that the remakrs and illustrations 
relating to the same topics were for the most 



part different in expression or bearing, and 
perceiving that leaving out these portions 
would make unseemly chasms, it was thought 
best to let them remain as originally written. 

The author would not have it understood, 
that he has selected these discourses from the 
mass of his manuscripts, as affording the best 
specimens of his pulpit addresses either in re- 
spect to the subject matter or literary execu- 
tion. He has chosen them because he thought 
he might do more good by thus addressing the 
young, than by any thing he could say to the 
mature. They have nothing to do with the 
disputes or speculations of the day ; no refer- 
ence to dogmas or creeds ; and have nothing 
in them exclusive or sectarian. They are al- 
together practical, and are founded upon princi- 
ples and considerations that appeal to our com- 
mon humanity and upon the universally admit- 
ted truths of our common Christianity. 

If they were written without a thought of 
printing, it may be asked, why are they print- 
ed? It has been long the writer's intention to 
comply with a request made him, by some of 
the young persons of the society with which 
he was connected during the earliest years of 
his ministry, that he would furnish them with 



some printed memorials of that ministry. He 
now fulfills that intention. He makes this his 
present to the young, who are children of the 
once young, to whom some of these discourses 
were addressed. He has placed at the end the 
character of Timothy Pickering, as a model 
for the young citizens of our country to imi- 
tate, and that while they survey his character 
they may learn, what, it is to be feared, they 
can not learn from any living examples, that 
there may be such a thing as undeviating po- 
litical integrity and perfectly disinterested pa- 
triotism through a long series of years and in a 
great variety of the most responsible public 
offices, amidst the most violent conflicts and 
momentous revolutions of parties. 
Jan. 1844. 



O o tHe a<Huut< membeta- o-P bfle c7 oci/efcu> 
until/ lufvlorv ft/e uxto (W>fc eowtecfceo-j cwttf- Wio-fcc oP flLfr 



PRESENT FROM A PASTOR. 



DISCOURSE I. 

PART I . 

BRIEF STATEMENT OF SOME OF THE EVIDENCES OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

Amidst the wild speculations that tend 
to unsettle every thing and settle nothing, 
there is no object more worthy to engage 
the attention of the young, when of an age 
to think and inquire for themselves, than 
a sober and dispassionate examination of 
the evidences of the divine origin and 
authority of the religion, the institutions 
of which they are called upon to sup- 
port, and, from Sabbath to Sabbath, are 
1 



Z A PRESENT 

exhorted to make its precepts the guide 
of their lives, and its promises the found- 
ation of their hopes for eternity. I can 
conceive of no attainment more desirable 
and important for the young, than an 
early and settled belief in the truth of 
the Christian revelation, founded upon 
rational and enlightened conviction. To 
state some of the principal facts and rea- 
sons, which have produced this convic T 
tion in the minds of the wisest and best 
of men, in every successive generation in 
all Christian countries since the first pro- 
mulgation of this religion, is the object 
of the following discourse. 

John, xx : 29. — Jesus saith unto him, 
Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou 
hast believed; blessed are they that have not 
seen, and yet have believed. [The sense of 
the original in the last clause, may be 
more correctly expressed thus, — happy 
they, who having never seen, shall neverthe- 
less believe.'] 



FROM A PASTOR. 6 

It was the peculiar fortune of a small 
number of our fellow men, including the 
disciple whom our Lord addressed, as 
in the text, to be eye and ear witnesses 
of the acts and discourses during his min- 
istry, and of the death and resurrection 
of Jesus of Nazareth, of whom Moses and 
the prophets wrote, who claimed to be 
a teacher, specially endowed and com- 
missioned by God, the long predicted 
and earnestly expected Messiah of the 
remarkable people, to whom, when the 
fullness of time had come, he was sent. 
Upon the recorded testimony of these 
eye and ear witnesses to what they had 
heard, and to what they had seen with their 
eyes, what they had looked upon, and their 
hands had handled of the word of life, we 
and all who have professed themselves 
Christians since their time, rest our faith 
in the religion, which we gratefully re- 
ceive as a revelation from God, a super- 
natural communication of his will and 



4 A PRESENT 

gracious purposes respecting the present 
duties and future destination of his human 
offspring. 

That it is possible that the evidences 
of the truth of the evangelical history, 
addressed to our reason, can be as con- 
vincing and satisfactory to us, as the evi- 
dences addressed to the senses of the 
original witnesses were to them, no one, 
I presume, will take upon him seriously 
to affirm. And the feeling is natural, 
which all, who have reflected upon the 
subject, have sometimes experienced, and 
many have expressed, that those who 
have to rely upon the testimony of the 
original witnesses, are less favored than 
these witnesses in a matter of the deepest 
interest and of the highest moment to 
their virtue and happiness. 

But if we view the matter rightly, it 
will appear that this circumstance puts a 
talent into our hands, from which we 
may derive a moral advantage over the 



FROM A PASTOR. 5 

original witnesses. Their faith had no 
virtue in itself, as they were situated ; it 
was an involuntary act of the mind. The 
evidence was irresistible. There was 
therefore no more merit in believing, than 
there is in seeing, when the light of day 
is poured upon the organ of vision. In 
all cases of sensible evidence, as of math- 
ematical, or demonstrative proof, assent 
or faith, is an involuntary act of the mind, 
to which is attached no other merit than 
that of being affected according to an un- 
alterable law of our nature. But when 
our assent is required to a proposition, 
which, if once admitted to be true, lays 
us under acknowledged obligation to sup- 
press every evil or corrupt affection or 
disposition, to correct vicious habits if we 
have them, to elevate the character, to 
conform the temper and conduct to an 
exalted standard of piety and morals, as- 
sent or faith in such case, indicates a better 
disposition, conveys the idea of superior 
1* 



b A PRESENT 

candor and fairness, of more approv- 
able qualities of mind, when it is 
yielded to a reasonable degree of evi- 
dence, which may yet admit of dispute 
and plausible objection, than when it is 
surrendered to overwhelming proof, to 
absolute demonstration, or as in the case 
of the original witnesses, to the evidence 
of the senses. 

The apostles and primitive disciples, 
could not do otherwise than they did, 
viz : believe and act accordingly after the 
proofs they had seen and heard and felt 
of the Messiahship of Jesus, of the super- 
natural authority, with which he spoke 
and acted, and of the divine power by 
which he was proved to be the Son of 
God, in his resurrection from the dead 
and in the subsequent effusion of the 
Spirit upon them, according to his prom- 
ise. 

The evidences which challenge our 
faith in Christ or Christianity are ad- 



FROM A. PASTOR. 7 

dressed to our reason. They do not 
carry irresistible conviction to the mind; 
they do not, like the evidences exhibited 
to the senses, as well as the reason of the 
apostles, preclude the possibility of doubt 
or incredulity. They require to be exam- 
ined and weighed. They are not forced 
upon our attention ; we must turn our 
attention to them. They demand ex- 
emption from prejudice and passion, 
and corrupt propensities, — in a word, — 
seriousness and fairness of mind, in order 
to produce their proper effect, and to 
secure assent to the facts and doctrines 
of Christianity, and thus to establish faith 
upon the sure basis of enlightened and 
rational conviction. There is, conse- 
quently, scope and opportunity for the 
exercise of moral qualities in the affair of 
faith, in yielding or withholding assent. 
If " men easily believe what they wish 
may be true," the converse of the aphor- 
ism is as often exemplified in their believ- 



8 A PRESENT 

ing with difficulty, or refusing to believe 
at all, what they wish may not be true. 
If then a man believes the divine origin 
and authority of Christianity, which be- 
lief necessarily involves the concession 
that he is bound to make its moral pre- 
cepts the rule of his life, to be ever aim- 
ing and striving to live the Heavenly and 
Divine life of Jesus, and to be pure, as the 
author and finisher of his faith is pure, — 
if he thus believes upon the strength of a 
reasonable degree of evidence in favor of 
this religion, upon evidence not amount- 
ing to certainty, but having a preponder- 
ance of probabilities on its side, — this 
man shows that he is disposed to virtue 
and to piety, — that he is not afraid, or 
averse to find the Christian revelation 
true, — that his prevailing sentiments and 
dispositions, are on the side of religion 
and goodness. There is manifested in 
this man's faith something indicative of 
a better mind, of better moral qualities 



FROM A PASTOR. d 

than we should recognize in the belief of 
another, who yielded his assent to the 
truth of this same religion not till he was 
in a manner compelled to it by an over- 
whelming degree of evidence, such as 
that which Thomas insisted on, the evi- 
dence of the senses, or that which alone 
can equal it, mathematical demonstration. 
In the latter case, there is strong indica- 
tion of some sinister interest or inclina- 
tion, some faulty temper or habit, or a 
perversity of will, that must be sacrificed 
or corrected, if he admits Christianity to 
be true, and which, swaying the mind to- 
ward the part of unbelief and irreligion, 
gives a strong bias to its decisions upon 
all subjects of a moral nature, and espe- 
cially that of a religion, which, in the 
name of a righteous God, inculcates 
righteousness and piety, and proclaims a 
future retribution, that every one may re- 
ceive the things done in the body, according 
to that he hath done, whether it be good or 
bad. 



10 A PRESENT 

This may account for the unbelief of 
most men, by whom Christianity has 
been rejected, who were capable of ex- 
amining and judging of the evidences it 
exhibits of a miraculous origin. Mistak- 
ing also for Christianity what in no sense 
belongs to it, the corruptions, and absurd 
dogmas which have borne the name of 
Christianity, has, no doubt, made many 
intelligent and virtuous men unbelievers. 
There may be other causes of unbelief, 
which imply no moral obliquity or blame. 
But for the most part the incredulous 
have arrayed themselves against Chris- 
tianity, as a divine revelation, because 
they have felt that its purity and oppo- 
sition to all evil is against them, and be- 
cause it requires the sacrifice of what 
they are not willing to part with, or the 
performance of what they are not willing 
to do. 

These observations may serve to illus- 
trate the sentiment of the text, blessed are 



FROM A PASTOR. 11 

they that have not seen and yet have believed; 
as if our Lord had said, "happy they 
who shall have received the gospel I have 
proclaimed as true, and shall have obey- 
ed the truth in the love of it, upon the 
strength of that kind, and degree of evi- 
dence, which shall be hereafter afforded 
to men, who can not have that of their 
senses, as thou, Thomas, hast had." If 
the evidences of divine revelation were 
greater and more obvious than they are, 
they would so far preclude the voluntary 
exercise of our powers, as to leave no 
room for good or bad dispositions to man- 
ifest themselves in believing or not be- 
lieving. There could be no ground for 
ascribing to faith, as the Scriptures uni- 
formly do, any moral worth whatever, or 
to unbelief any moral blame or demerit. 
There could indeed be no unbelief, if the 
evidence were such as supposed, i. e. not 
liable to objection, or to be called in 
question. 



12 A PRESENT 

The reason is hence apparent why, as 
beings in a state of trial and moral disci- 
pline, endowed with practical free-will 
and powers to be exercised, in order to 
their improvement and perfection, God 
has given to men only such kind and de- 
grees of evidence, as we find, of his own 
existence and moral government, and of 
his extraordinary interpositions, particu- 
larly of that last and greatest by his su- 
pernaturally endowed Son and Messen- 
ger Jesus Christ, for the recovery of 
mankind from the ignorance, depravity 
and misery, in which they were early 
involved, and for their elevation and ad- 
vancement towards his own moral like- 
ness in knowledge and righteousness and true 
holiness. 

Although for the above-mentioned rea- 
sons, the evidences of the truth of the 
evangelical history or of Christianity, are 
such as may be gainsayed and resisted by 
men of intelligence, that have their mo- 



FROM A PASTOR. 13 

tives for wishing it may not be true, they 
are sufficient, when duly examined and 
weighed, to satisfy every unprejudiced 
inquirer, who is competent to judge of 
their validity. 

Tn support of this position, I now pro- 
ceed to offer a few of the almost number- 
less considerations which might be ad- 
duced as proofs, and which may be found 
amply detailed and argued with great 
strength of reasoning, in the learned and 
voluminous treatises, that have been writ- 
ten in defence of our religion, and in re- 
ply to the arguments and objections of 
unbelievers. 

The credibility of the evangelical his- 
tory, or of Christianity, rests upon the 
existence of undoubted and undeniable 
facts, for the existence of which no ade- 
quate cause can be assigned in the known 
principles of the human mind and consti- 
tution, or in the ordinary powers and 
operations of nature, and can therefore 
2 



14 A PRESENT 

be satisfactorily accounted for only by 
ascribing them to a supernatural cause, 
to the miraculous interposition of the 
Author of Nature, who alone is able to 
control, to suspend, or vary its opera- 
tions and laws at pleasure. The contro- 
versy then, between the believer and the 
impugner of revelation, when brought to 
a point, is virtually a conflict of opposite 
miracles. They are at issue as to which 
have the best title to be believed from 
all the history and phenomena of the 
universe and of man. For the Christian 
miracles, the advocate of revelation can 
assign an adequate cause and reason ; for 
the facts that must be miracles, if the 
Christian miracles are not true, his oppo- 
nent can assign no satisfactory cause or 
reason whatever. Thus the principal 
evidences of Divine revelation may be 
reduced to a succession of dilemmas, 
presenting a choice of alternatives, to 
one or the other of which, every mind 



FROM A PASTOR. 15 

must assent, or remain in utter skepticism 
in respect to every thing that does not 
fall under the immediate cognizance of 
the senses. A host of able defenders of 
Christianity, have abundantly shown that 
the probabilities in favor of the reality of 
the Christian miracles, exceedingly over- 
balance all that has been advanced by 
infidel writers to disprove their reality. 

For illustration of the principle here 
stated, I will now offer to the considera- 
tion of the reader, several dilemmas, or 
alternatives, to which, as I have said, the 
principal evidences of the Christian reve- 
lation may be reduced. 

I. It is a fact, attested, and put be- 
yond all dispute by undoubted documents, 
Pagan as well as Christian, that great 
numbers not only of Christians, but Jews 
and Heathen, " gave unquestionable tes- 
timony, some expressly, and others by 
indirect circumstances, as history informs 
us, to the miracles said to be performed 



16 A PRESENT 

by Christ and his apostles, upon the hu- 
man body ; " such as giving sight to the 
blind, hearing to the deaf, making whole, 
withered or maimed limbs, healing in- 
stantly diseases of long continuance, re- 
storing reason to the insane, and raising 
the dead to life. Now we have the best 
possible evidence that we can have for 
any historical fact, that great numbers 
believed as fully as they believed in their 
own existence, that they saw with their 
own eyes these miracles performed. In 
consequence of these miracles, because 
the common people were led by them to 
receive Jesus as the expected Messiah, 
the rulers and chief men of the Jews, who 
opposed the pretensions of Jesus, took 
counsel how they might destroy him. 
Others adhered the more firmly to him. 
The multitude on account of his miracles, 
would have taken him by force, and made 
him their king. The miracles were of 
such notoriety, and so noised abroad, 



FROM A PASTOR. 17 

that the diseased were brought to him 
whenever he entered a village that he 
might heal them. 

After his death and resurrection, the 
apostles everywhere testified that they 
saw these miracles crowned by that most 
momentous one of all, the resurrection 
of Jesus himself, who showed himself 
alive to his disciples, by many infallible 
proofs, for the space of forty days, dur- 
ing which interval he repeatedly met and 
conversed and partook of food with his 
disciples, and finally leading them from 
the city, to a neighboring village, as- 
cended up on high out of their sight. 
The apostles afterwards were endowed, 
as he had promised them, with power to 
work miracles in his name. They are 
reported to have wrought many miracles. 
And multitudes in consequence, believed 
their testimony respecting Jesus. They 
make these miracles a ground of appeal 
to the churches which they had gathered 
2* 



18 A PRESENT 

in proof of their apostleship, which 
churches must have believed that they 
saw these miracles, or no such appeal 
would have been made. 

I might multiply almost without limit, 
the circumstances which go to prove, 
that not only the apostles, but multi- 
tudes, alike the friends and enemies of 
Jesus, believed that they saw him per- 
form the miracles ascribed to him, — that 
the apostles afterwards were conscious of 
a power accompanying them of working 
miracles, — that their converts believed 
they saw these miracles, — that others in 
great numbers, as well as the apostles, 
were actuated in all their proceedings in 
respect to Christianity, by a uniform con- 
viction of the reality of these miracles. 

We are to recollect that those who 
were not convinced of the Divine mission 
of Jesus, never denied the reality of the 
miracles. They ascribed them to the 
agency of demons. Their testimony is 



FROM A PASTOR. 19 

therefore more decisive if possible than 
that of the disciples of Jesus, as to the 
reality of the miracles. Their reality 
was never called in question by the op- 
posers of Christianity, till a better philo- 
sophy taught them that they could not 
have been effected but by the immediate 
interposition of the Author of nature. 
When the idea of magic or demoniacal 
agency was exploded, it became the last 
resort of unbelief, to deny that any mira- 
cles were performed. 

No historical fact, then, is better authen- 
ticated, than that great numbers believed 
that they saw the miracles ascribed to Je- 
sus and his apostles, really performed be- 
fore their eyes. The objection to these 
miracles is, that they are a deviation from 
the uniform tenor or laws of nature, and 
are therefore to be rejected. Here then is 
presented the dilemma, or choice of con- 
flicting miracles. It is equally a deviation 
from the well-known and uniform tenor of 
the intelligent nature of man, or from all 



20 A PRESENT 

that is known of the laws and operations 
of the human mind, — is as great a miracle 
as any said to have been wrought upon 
the human body, that such numbers alike 
of the enemies and friends of Jesus and 
his apostles, should in their different 
ways, have borne unequivocal testimony 
to these miracles, unless they had been 
really performed. If the recorded mira- 
cles of the New Testament are a violation 
of physical order or analogy, the belief and 
report of these miracles, maintained un- 
der circumstances, which proved beyond 
the possibility of doubt, the conviction of 
the witnesses, as to the truth of what 
they reported, — maintained, as they 
were, by the apostles, at the sacrifice of 
every earthly good, and of life itself; — 
this their belief and testimony, if no such 
miracles were wrought, would be a viola- 
tion of moral order, of mental analogy, 
as great and palpable, as the recorded 
miracles are of physical analogy. 



FROM A PASTOR. 21 

Between these conflicting miracles the 
believer thinks that he decides rationally 
in favor of the miracles recorded by the 
Evangelists. They are in perfect con- 
sistency with all his best ideas of the 
character, providence and moral govern- 
ment of God, — of his paternal interest 
and concern for the instruction and im- 
provement of his children. They were 
wrought to authenticate the Divine mis- 
sion of Jesus, — to prove that he was a 
messenger sent by God, and thus to sanc- 
tion the lessons of Divine wisdom, the 
truths and informations of such a moral 
teacher, exemplar and revealer of immor- 
tality, as the world needed. They were 
fitted to accomplish the ends for which 
they were wrought, viz. to awaken atten- 
tion to Christ's instructions, and to prove 
that he taught with authority from God ; 
— and, in whatever possible light they are 
viewed, they appear worthy of the wis- 
dom and goodness of the Being whose 



22 A PRESENT 

extraordinary interposition they attested. 
The unbeliever by adopting the opposite 
alternative has to acquiesce, if he can, 
in the monstrous supposition that " God 
confounded the understandings, affec- 
tions and whole train of associations of 
many human beings, so that while they 
appear to have been influenced and actu- 
ated in all other things in a manner like 
all other men, in respect to the history 
of Jesus, and its consequences, acted in a 
manner repugnant to all our ideas and 
experiences. "* 

II. Again ; if an absurdity so extrav- 
agant may bear to be named, admit that 
no such men, events or transactions, as 
those we read of in the Scriptures, ever 
had a being, the existence of the Scrip- 
tures themselves would be a miracle as 
great as any recorded in them. They 
can be proved to have been written by 



*See Dr. Hartley's work on man. Of the tmth of the Chris- 
tian Religion. 



FROM A PASTOR. 23 

many different individuals existing under 
very different circumstances, and re- 
moved some of them by the distance of 
many centuries from each other. The 
most cursory reader of these Scriptures 
cannot help perceiving a uniformity of 
design, manifesting itself from the first to 
the last. What is written in one age is 
interpreted and confirmed in another and 
distant age, by the occurrence of events, 
of which the writer could not possibly 
have had any knowledge from human 
foresight, that they were to be, or that 
what he was writing could have any 
reference to, or receive illustration from 
their occurrence. All this can be proved 
as clearly as any other historical facts, 
and in the same way. 

Now that all these writers, called 
prophets, evangelists and apostles, who 
lived, several of them, some thousand 
years apart, were all impostors, agreed 
without knowing it in imposing the most 



24 A PRESENT 

glorious and delightful cheat of so divine 
a religion upon mankind, as is contained 
in these Scriptures, would imply a much 
more stupendous and incredible miracle, 
than that these writers recorded truly 
and simply what w T as dictated and accom- 
plished by the supernatural influence and 
interposition of an Almighty and All- 
ruling Spirit, who worketh all in all after 
the counsels of his own will, and who alone 
can see and declare the end from the begin- 
ning. The unbeliever by denying the 
authenticity of the Scriptures, and affirm- 
ing them to be a series of fictitious narra- 
tives, and of human precepts and 
speculations, is pressed equally in this 
alternative by his grand difficulty, the 
supernatural that so manifestly pervades 
them, all uniformly agreeing in one aim 
and tendency, viz. the gradual introduc- 
tion and ultimate establishment of a per- 
fect religion in the world. He is still 
compelled to admit the existence of facts 



FROM A PASTOR. 25 

or effects evidently surpassing all that 
the natural powers and ordinary opera- 
tions of the human mind have been known 
to achieve, and, therefore, in the proper 
sense, miraculous, or supernatural. From 
this admission there appears to be no es- 
cape but in the denial of all testimony 
and historical evidence, however trans- 
mitted, — i. e. in utter skepticism. 

PART II. 

III. This point will derive additional 
illustration, and the argument new force 
from a brief consideration of the charac- 
ter of the religion, to the promulgation 
and establishment of which all the extra- 
ordinary and miraculous agents, events 
and transactions, of which we read in the 
Scriptures, were either preparatory, or 
immediately conducive. The signal 
marks of a Divine origin, which the char- 
acter of Christianity bears in all its prin- 
cipal features, present to the unbeliever 
3 



26 A PRESENT 

a difficulty, of which no satisfactory so- 
lution can be given upon the supposition 
that it is solely a work of man's device. 
The books containing this religion can 
be proved by an accumulation of evidence 
to have been in existence substantially 
the same as they have come down to us, 
within the same century in which the 
events are said to have occurred, and the 
doctrines to have been delivered, of 
which they purport to be a faithful histo- 
ry and record. We are sufficiently ac- 
quainted from other sources with the 
learning and philosophy, the theology 
and religions, the morality and intellect- 
ual progress of the age, and particularly 
of the singular people of that country, in 
which Christianity and its author had 
their origin . 

Every honest mind, competent to form 
a judgment upon the subject, upon due 
examination, discovers in the character 
and instructions of Jesus, that is, in 



FROM A PASTOR. 27 

Christianity, — for they are inseparably 
associated in our minds, — an originality, 
a simple majesty and grandeur of ideas, 
— a purity and elevation of moral senti- 
ment, — a model of practical goodness, — 
a spirituality and sublimity, a parental 
and impartial tenderness for his human 
offspring, an indescribable union of the 
venerable and attractive in the represent- 
ations given of the divine character, — a 
rational, spiritual and simple worship of 
God, as our Father, enjoined and exempli- 
fied, — a universal benevolence inculcated 
and practiced, — a humility united with 
dignity, — a meekness without meanness, 
— a morality founded upon the govern- 
ment of the thoughts and the suppression 
of the first rise and stir of vicious desire in 
the heart, — a perfection, in short, and 
harmony of virtues, to which no approach 
had been made in idea, much less in prac- 
tice, by the philosophers and wise men 
of the age. We see Jesus, without hav- 
ing had access to any extraordinary 



28 A PRESENT 

external means of knowledge, of humble 
origin and obscure life, till he appeared 
in the character of a public teacher 
specially commissioned by God ; — we 
see this moral wonder, this more than 
sage, dispensing his sublime lessons, 
confounding the learned scribes and law- 
yers with his reasoning, silencing his ad- 
versaries with his answers to their 
insidious questions, to their amazement 
replying to their thoughts, which they 
supposed they had effectually concealed. 
No wonder we hear the people exclaim, 
whence hath this man all this wisdom having 
never learned ? 

The doctrines which he taught bear no 
marks of having originated from any of 
the schools or systems, which man's wis- 
dom had devised. They are untinctured 
with the prejudices, the spirit, the opin- 
ions, or any of the characteristic features 
of the age or country, in which they 
were delivered. They furnish to their 



FROM A PASTOR. 29 

disciples all the principles of unlimited 
improvement and happiness, having re- 
spect to man equally as an individual and 
as united to his species in all the diversi- 
fied relations of the social state. They 
are adapted to all men in all conditions, 
of all countries and all ages. They con- 
tain a prospective provision for the high- 
est conceivable advancement and refine- 
ment of the human powers and of human 
society. And yet the most peculiar fea- 
ture, perhaps, by which this religion is 
distinguished from all the religions or 
superstitions, which then existed in the 
world, is its distinct and authoritative 
annunciation of a future life, and especial- 
ly the nature of the rewards, or rather of 
the happiness of the heaven, which it 
promises to its obedient disciples. 

The fancied heaven of paganism re- 
sembled in character the sensual and un- 
holy rites of its idolatrous worship. It 
was in all nations a heaven of earthly 
3* 



30 A PRESENT 

occupations, distinctions and pleasures, 
such as accorded with the habits and 
tastes of beings in bondage to their ap- 
petites and passions. There was noth- 
ing in it allied in the remotest degree to 
the pure and spiritual character and sanc- 
tity of those devout joys, that intimate 
union of congenial minds, that perfection 
of love and wisdom, and knowledge, and 
blessedness, which enter into our idea of 
the Christian heaven. In short the heav- 
en of Christians, which is a state result- 
ing mainly from the virtues and affections 
which constitute the Christian character, 
bears no resemblance to any thing that 
had been previously conceived of the 
future condition of man. The invention of 
such a religion, i. e. of such a character, 
as that of Jesus, and of the doctrines and 
instructions ascribed to him, bearing such 
evident marks of a wisdom and a perfec- 
tion of goodness, so manifestly surpassing 
all that the wisest and best men had at- 



FROM A PASTOR. 31 

tained to by their own unaided powers, — 
in all respects so distinct and alien from 
the spirit, institutions, opinions and char- 
acter of the age and country, in which 
this religion and its author had their 
origin, — the invention of all this, I say, 
if the whole were a fiction, supposes an 
intellectual phenomenon, amoral miracle, 
as inexplicable upon the ordinary princi- 
ples or laws, which govern and limit the 
powers of the human mind, and as repug- 
nant to the general experience of man- 
kind, as raising a dead man to life, or 
calming a tempest with a word. The 
only cause, which our unbiased reason 
can assign, as adequate to the production 
of such results, of such a being so en- 
dowed as Jesus, living such a life, giving 
to the world such a religion, must be 
found in the Father of lights, and " Lord of 
all power and might," who gave his 
spirit without measure to the author of 
this religion, and to whom Jesus uniform- 



32 A PRESENT 

ly ascribes all his supernatural endow- 
ments, and all the wisdom and excellence 
of his doctrines. 

IV. Once more ; admit the character 
of Jesus and his religion to have been the 
invention of twelve men, who called 
themselves his disciples and apostles, the 
subsequent progress of this fiction is to 
be accounted for, opposed as it was by 
all the interests, vices and prejudices, 
and still more, by the established super- 
stitions of every people, and these inter- 
woven with all their civil transactions, 
their amusements, every important en- 
terprise and event in life, every solemn 
incident of home, and even their daily 
repasts. And add to this, the wit, and 
learning, and philosophy, and the civil 
authorities every where arrayed against 
this new faith and its propagators. That 
the first preachers of this faith, instead 
of meeting aid and encouragement from 
these sources, met only the most unqali- 



FROM A PASTOR. 33 

fied hostility in every form, and endured 
incredible hardships and sufferings, and 
finally a cruel death for their testimony 
to the truth of the facts and doctrines, 
which they announced, is attested by a 
cloud of unexceptionable witnesses, hea- 
then as well as Christian. There is also 
the same evidence that nevertheless, 
in defiance of all these obstacles, in the 
face of an opposing world, this new faith 
every where found proselytes, and mul- 
titudes both of men and women were added 
daily ; " so that within about thirty years 
after the first Christian discourse was 
preached in Jerusalem, a few days sub- 
sequent to the declared ascension of 
the author of this faith, the gospel had 
spread and continued to be embraced by 
increasing numbers, not only throughout 
almost all parts of the Roman empire, but 
even in Parthia and India.' ' Its subse- 
quent progress till it became the religion 
of the then civilized world is sufficiently 
known. 



34 A PRESENT 

If the first successful propagation of 
Christianity against all conceivable ob- 
stacles, and its final triumph over pagan- 
ism throughout the vast empire of the 
Caesars do not prove that it had what it 
professes to have had, the immediate 
agency of God, i. e. the supernatural aid 
of miracles, then we have a stupendous 
effect without a cause ; for no other cause 
has been, or, as we think, can be as- 
signed, in any measure proportioned and 
adequate to so mighty and thorough a revo- 
lution in the principles, worship, man- 
ners, morals, and entire character, not of 
an obscure community or clan, but of en- 
tire nations and empires. When we 
see this religion, which was a stumbling 
block to Jews, and foolishness to the cul- 
tivated Greeks, and hostile to the ruling 
passions and interests of the leading men 
of the age, at open and irreconcilable va- 
riance with the established opinions and 
most sacred usages of every people ; — 



FROM A PASTOR. 35 

when we see this religion in the hands 
of a few plain, obscure, powerless, and, 
if we except Paul and perhaps Luke, un- 
educated men, working its way like leaven 
in a mass of kneaded flour, while its pub- 
lishers and their disciples were every 
where opposed, and harrassed, and pun- 
ished ; — when we see it against such 
formidable odds, proselyting a majority 
of the gentile world, subduing their pride 
of science, their vain philosophy and their 
vices, — subverting all their ancient opin- 
ions, their inveterate prejudices, their 
superstitions, their temples and their gods, 
we are constrained to acknowledge that 
nothing short of the interposition of a 
Divine hand could have effected all this ; 
and if this counsel or this work had been of 
men and not of God, it would have come to 



V. The beneficial effects, which have 
accompanied and still accompany the 
knowledge and reception of this religion, 



36 A PRESENT 

furnish a strong presumptive proof of its 
Divine origin. It has wrought the most 
important changes in the intellectual and 
moral condition of every people among 
whom it has been established and taught, 
even with the lamentable accompaniment 
and debasing aloy of human admixtures, 
that have been everywhere dispensed with 
it. It is the excellency of the knowledge of 
Christ Jesus, our Lord, the informations 
and discoveries, the truth and grace, the 
spirit of love and of a sound mind, which 
he has communicated in the gospel that 
have raised the human character to an 
elevation of moral purity, integrity and 
intellectual dignity, and especially called 
forth a spirit and expansiveness of phi- 
lanthropy, a diffusive charity and com- 
passionate regard for the poor and dis- 
tressed, the ignorant and enslaved, the 
fallen and forsaken of the world, to which 
the most crvilized nations without this 
religion never made the most distant ap- 



FROM A PASTOR. 37 

proaoh either in example or in idea. 
Christianity as it introduced, where it 
was received with any degree of intelli- 
gence, a radical change with respect to 
► the principles of human conduct, by pre- 
senting new and higher objects than this 
world offers to huinan desire, proposing 
instead of the things that are seen and tem- 
poral, the rewards of a future eternal life, 
as the only worthy and ultimate end, for 
which its disciples should live and act, 
and suffer here with patient continuance in 
well doing, in this way greatly changed 
the aspect and character of society. It 
has- infused a spirit of mildness and hu- 
manity into the laws and policy of nations, 
— softened the ferocity of war, and abol- 
ished many cruel usages. While it has 
exerted this general meliorating influence 
upon the nations of Christendom, multi- 
tudes without number in the private 
walks of life have been guided and formed 
to piety and virtue by its precepts, and 
4 



38 A PRESENT 

have died rejoicing in its promises. By 
exalting the female character, it has im- 
parted to domestic life its best joys, and 
has rendered home, the fireside of a 
Christian and well ordered family, the 
best emblem of the mansions which await 
the righteous in our Father's house in 
heaven, and at the same time the best 
scene of preparation for these mansions. 
It has, in short, enabled the Christian 
world to take an immense step towards 
perfection in every thing that tends to 
enlighten, improve, and bless mankind. 
And it has been correctly said, that "the 
pagan nations were in a kind of moral 
infancy, in comparison with what we are 
at the present day." 

I am aware that all this will be attri- 
buted by the unbeliever to the influence 
of philosophy, co-operating with the 
natural progress of the human mind. 
But there was philosophy, and the mind 
was at work in such men as Zoroaster, 



FROM A PASTOR. 39 

Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Cicero, and 
others of like endowments before Christi- 
anity was introduced. And what was 
the result of the best efforts of the wisest 
men of the most powerful intellect ? 
Nothing satisfactory, nothing clear, noth- 
ing decisive, nothing determinate upon 
the most important and interesting sub- 
jects of human inquiry, in respect to the 
Author of the universe and our being, — 
His character and government, — the ul- 
timate design of our existence, and the 
end for which we are placed in this 
mixed and seemingly confused scene. 

If God has, — as the disciples of revela- 
tion see plainly that he has, — inscribed 
proofs of his being, and stamped impres- 
sions of his character, and written les- 
sons of human duty upon the face of his 
works, it was done in a language which, 
like the Egyptian hieroglyphics, became 
and remained illegible for ages, which 
the mass of mankind at least failed to read 



4U A PRESENT 

and understand, till revelation served as 
a grammar and interpreter to this lan- 
guage. In regard to a future existence 
all was obscure, indistinct and doubtful, 
till life and immortality were brought to 
light by the gospel. If the human mind 
has attained to entirely new and clear 
and loftier views upon these subjects, it 
is reasonable to conclude that a greater 
cause, a mightier agent has been at work, 
and that this cause, this agent is no other 
than the wisdom of God, and the power 
of God supernaturally communicated in 
the gospel. 

Philosophy, so far from contributing to 
produce or diffuse the better light, which 
has informed, and cheered, and purified 
so many minds, since this gospel was 
preached to the poor and rich alike, 
early and long contributed to obscure 
and retard the progress of this better 
light. When it could no longer contend 
with Christianity, it became its treach- 



FROM A PASTOR. 41 

erous ally. It encumbered its vanquish- 
er with its weak and officious aid. It, in 
no long time, blended with the pure and 
simple doctrines of our heaven-taught 
Teacher, its own miserable metaphysics 
and idle speculations. It incorporated 
with this divine institution so much that 
was human, that what was heavenly lay 
well nigh concealed beneath what was 
earthly ; and the spirit of Christianity 
was repressed and overburdened for ages 
by the mass of extraneous matter, the 
gross and unwieldy body, as I may say, 
with which philosophy, co-operating with 
human passions and policy, had invested 
this offspring and image of Deity. Yet 
offspring of heaven, as it was, it could 
not be destroyed. It possessed a self- 
restoring principle. It revived with the 
revival of letters. It contained within 
itself the means of correcting the abuses 
and corruptions, with which it had been 
so long loaded and disfigured. It has 
4* 



42 A PRESENT 

done much towards correcting and puri- 
fying that same philosophy, from which 
it formerly suffered so great incumbrance 
and disfigurement, thus returning, as it 
teaches its disciples, benefits for inju- 
ries, and overcoming evil with good. 

In as much as philosophy has ceased 
to blend its dogmas with the plain in- 
structions of Christianity, and having ex- 
changed the pride of the teacher for the 
humility of the pupil, is content to set at 
the feet of Jesus, it has become the hand- 
maid and interpreter of pure Christianity. 
It has already done much towards sep- 
arating from the simple truth, as it is in 
Jesus, the accretions which had been 
gathering upon it for centuries from hu- 
man error, superstition, imposture and 
bigotry. It is gradually removing the 
thick rust, with which this pure gold had 
been so long incrusted and covered, — 
under which its brightness and its ster- 
ling worth have been so much darkened 



FROM A PASTOR. 43 

and depreciated, — which in the last cen- 
tury, was the occasion especially in Ro- 
man Catholic countries, why so many 
men of brilliant talents neglected it, as 
dross, which, though somewhat dimin- 
ished by the attrition it underwent during 
the collisions of the reformation, has still 
adhered to it under every form of pro- 
testantism, in sufficient portions greatly 
to obscure and mar the Divine image and 
superscription originally stampt upon the 
face of it. Philosophy by the application 
of more enlightened and just principles 
of philology to the interpretation of 
Scripture, is wearing off this rust very 
rapidly at the present day, and the re- 
cords of our faith uniformly emit a 
purer and diviner light, as this adventi- 
tious and earthly matter is cleared away. 
But philosophy of itself and without a 
teacher sent from God, and the supernatu- 
ral light imparted by Him, would still 
have left us to live and die involved in 



44 A PRESENT 

the same deep shades of moral darkness, 
the same ignorance of God, and of the 
true ends and proper happiness of our 
being, and with the same hopelessness, 
or obscurity and indistinctness of views 
in respect to all beyond the grave, which 
form the deplorable distinction and long 
inherited portion of every people, yet 
unvisited by the light and blessings of 
Christianity. 

A religion, therefore, which has done 
so much for the improvement, exaltation 
and happiness of the nations, that have 
received it, — a religion so adapted to 
the nature and condition of man, so 
fitted to meet and satisfy his deepest 
spiritual and moral wants, his instinc- 
tive desires and hopes, to which the 
things that are seen and temporal are 
all disproportioned and inadequate, — 
such a religion from this single circum- 
stance might claim to have come to us 
from God. Every good and ingenuous 
mind must wish it to be true. And 



FROM A PASTOR. 45 

when the several considerations that have 
been presented in this discourse, are 
duly weighed in connection with many 
others, which have been more clearly sta- 
ted and powerfully urged by abler minds, 
the conclusion, it seems to me, must 
be inevitable, as it must be most grateful 
to every fair inquirer, that such a relig- 
ion accompanied by such various and 
accumulated proofs of a miraculous and 
Divine origin, must be what it claims to 
be, a revelation from God. 

It is difficult for an established Chris- 
tian to comprehend the state of that 
man's mind, who can perceive more force 
in the objections, cavils and jests of in- 
fidel writers than in the arguments of 
Christian apologists for their religion. 
The difficulty is increased, when he 
recollects, that every objection of unbe- 
lievers, has been fairly met and conclu- 
sively answered when the objection ap- 
peared to have weight, and its futility 



46 A PRESENT 

shown when the objection was merely 
plausible ; and, that after all nothing has 
yet been advanced by them to invalidate 
the main evidences upon which our re- 
ligion rests. To refute a sneer, or retort 
a sarcasm, belongs not to the office of 
its advocate. Its heaven-commissioned 
author suffered the rabble, the priests, 
and his murderers to mock and insult 
without deigning any other reply than 
Father i forgive them, for they knovj not 
what they do. 

Yet what are we to think of men who, 
without examination can reject, and 
seemingly without motive, can treat with 
levity and foolish jesting a religion, to 
which we owe most of the blessings, by 
which we are distinguished from pagans 
and savages in our political, social, do- 
mestic and moral condition ; — a religion 
to which we are mainly indebted for the 
authority of law, the impartial adminis- 
tration of justice, the maintenance of 



FROM A PASTOR. 47 

peace and order, the prevalence of good 
manners, the safety with which we go 
abroad into society by day, and the se- 
curity with which we repose in our 
dwellings by night, — and still more, — 
infinitely more, — a religion to which we 
owe those sublime and animating pros- 
pects, which lighten the burdens and 
assuage the sorrows of life, which dispel 
the darkness and vanquish the terrors of 
the grave, — a religion, in short, whence 
we derive most of all that soothes, exalts 
and gladdens the life of man, which im- 
parts to its disciple 

" His strength to suffer, and his will to serve," 

—the light that guides, the faith that makes 
holy, the "hope full of immortality," and 
the charity which assimilates and conducts 
the soul to God. Well might our Lord 
pronounce the prophetic benediction of 
the text upon the future disciples of this 
religion, who should believe without hav- 



48 A. PRESENT 

ing the evidence of their senses, — happy 
they, who having not seen, shall nevertheless 
believe. 

For myself, I must have demonstration 
that this religion is a cunningly devised 
fable, which no unbeliever, nor writer 
against Christianity, living or dead, has 
yet shown or can show to be stronger 
than the " proofs from holy writ" of its 
Divine origin and truth, before I would 
consent to resign this religion, as false. 
Nay, if the entire world were agreed to 
reject it as a fiction, I would still reply 
to the unbelieving world, in the words of 
the poet, 

" What truth so precious as this cheat ? " 

And I would still cherish in life and in 
death the promise, which in God's name 
it has promised me, even eternal life. 

My young auditors will accept my 
friendliest wish and prayer for them, 
that they may make this religion, not 



FROM A PASTOR. 49 

only the greatest and strongest con- 
viction of their understanding, but the 
deepest and most cherished sentiment of 
their heart. Your parents, your best 
friends cannot ask of God for you, you 
cannot ask for yourselves a greater good 
than an early and cordial adoption of the 
religion of the bible, as the only guide 
that can conduct your steps in safety 
through " the slippery paths of youth/ ' — 
the only certain pledge and security of 
a virtuous and honorable manhood, — = 
the only refuge of gray hairs,— the sole 
antidote of death, and the precious earn- 
est of immortal joys. That it may be 
all these to each of my young auditors, 
will God grant for his infinite mercy's 
sake. Amen. 



50 



DISCOURSE II. 

RELIGION NECESSARY JN YOUTH AND IN ALL CONDITIONS 
AND ERAS OF LIFE. 

1 Kings, XVIII, 12.— But I, thy ser- 
vant, fear the Lord from my youth. 

It is a great mistake, a deplorable er- 
ror, into which most young persons fall, 
that at their time of life they have no 
serious concern with religion. They 
have other things to attend to, more 
suitable to their years, more pleasant, as 
they think, and more in unison with their 
keen relish of life and the gay anticipa- 
tions of youthful hope. The morning 
sun of their existence throws a brilliance 
and freshness over the opening perspec- 
tive of life, which enchants and ravishes 
their senses. Every object and scene 
about them is decked out in all the rain- 
bow hues of fancy, in all the attractive 



A PRESENT FROM A PASTOR. 51 

charms of novelty, gaiety and pleasure. 
Whatever strikes their eye or ear, by 
the poetry of their young and vivid 
imagination, is made to wear the shape 
of a new invitation to enjoyment. At 
every step new flowe.rs spring up and in- 
vite them to put forth - their hand and to 
pluck them, new forms of beauty start up 
and invite them to gaze and admire, new 
music swells upon the ear and detains 
them to listen, new images of delight 
rise up before the imagination and lead 
them captive with pleasant illusions. 
The prospect before them is continually 
varying, ever new and ever delightful. 

'Surrounded,' say they 'with so many 
pleasures, in the midst of a world, which 
abounds with every thing, that can grati- 
fy and entertain us ; light of heart, full 
of health, pleased with every thing, what 
have we to do with the sad and sombre 
warnings, the melancholy and solemn 
offices and counselings of religion ? 



52 A PRESENT 

Away with it ; 'tis an interrupter of our 
joys. We need it not, — we can be hap- 
py without it. It may do well for the 
sick, the unhappy, the aged and the dy- 
ing. For such it was intended, and no 
doubt is a very good thing in its place. 
We will resort to it when we find it 
necessary. But at present we will crown 
ourselves with roses ere they be withered and 
vnll let no flower of the spring — no pleas- 
ure of youth unenjoyed — pass away. 9 

Thus are the young beguiled by the 
fascinations of youthful pleasure and the 
delusive promises of happiness, which 
the world holds out to us, when we first 
enter upon its untried scenes ; and such 
is the language, if not of the lips, at least 
of the conduct of too many of our youth. 

Sensible of the great and peculiar perils 
which encompass the steps of the young, 
thus deceived by the specious promises 
of youthful hope, and the beautiful but 
evanescent coloring, which imagination 



FROM A PASTOR. 53 

gives to all objects at their period of life, 
I would, if possible, disabuse them of 
their error and forewarn them of their 
danger, especially of the fatal mistake 
they will commit, in neglecting religion 
while young. I would, if I might, con- 
vince them of the importance, let me 
rather say, the absolute necessity of the 
fear of the Lord from their youth. I would 
fain persuade them, under the guidance 
of this sacred principle, early to turn 
their feet into the only sure path of safe- 
ty, of rational enjoyment, of true honor 
and peace in this life, and which alone 
can conduct to the immortal rewards and 
felicities of the life to come. 

You will have already perceived by the 
text, that it will be my object in this dis- 
course to show that the fear of the Lord, or, 
in other words, a religious, conscientious 
regard to the laws and commandments of 
God, is necessary to be begun and cher- 
ished in youth, and maintained through 
5* 



54 A PRESENT 

the whole course of life. I am anxious 
to impress the minds of the young with 
the immense importance, the indispensa- 
ble necessity, of beginning life with the 
fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of 
wisdom, or of setting out in life with the de- 
liberate adoption and practical observance 
of the heaven-taught truths and precepts 
of religion. To this end I shall endeavor 
to show their great and constant need of 
religion in all conditions and eras of life. 
The fear of the Lord, says the Psalmist, 
is the beginning of wisdom, — that holy and 
sublime wisdom, which looks to the true 
and ultimate welfare of man, consid- 
ered in his immortal nature and prospects, 
— that prudent wisdom, which teaches 
us to form a right estimate of human 
life, — that discerning wisdom, which in- 
structs us in the true knowledge of 
ourselves, of our various powers and 
capacities, of the important relations we 
sustain and consequent duties, which we 



FROM A PASTOR. 55 

owe to our Creator and to Jesus, the son 
and messenger of his love, whom he sent 
to redeem the world, — in a word, that 
Divine and heavenly wisdom, which in 
the language of inspired men is but anoth- 
er name for religion in its most extended 
sense, comprehending suitable sentiments 
and a correspondent conduct towards 
God and man. The fear of the Lord, 
then, has a far higher and broader mean- 
ing than mere servile dread, and differs 
widely from terror, or that awe of Al- 
mighty power, which makes the devils 
tremble, yet continue devils still. It is 
that admiring and filial veneration of the 
infinite, all-good and perfect Being, which 
makes us fear to do evil, not so much 
from apprehension of the retributive ef- 
fects of his justice, as from unwillingness 
to forfeit his approbation and our own 
happy confidence in his parental love 
and kindness towards us. It has always 
blended with it a sentiment of love, a 



56 A PRESENT 

desire to be and to do what it believes to 
be most pleasing to the transcendently 
glorious and amiable object of its rev- 
erence and trust. It supposes the 
mind impressed with a deep and abiding 
sense of our absolute and entire depend- 
ence upon God for life, breath, hope and 
all things, and of the consequent obliga- 
tions, that lie upon us to love and honor, 
to serve and obey him, and submit our 
will to his will, and to consecrate all 
our powers to him, a willing, a holy and 
acceptable sacrifice, which is our reason- 
able service. 

This is the fear of the Lord in the 
sense of Scripture, — of holy men who spake 
as they were moved by the .Holy Spirit. 
And thus to fear God from your youth is, 
my young friends, your best wisdom and 
highest interest, — is your only security 
in a world abounding with snares to your 
virtue and perils to your soul, — is un- 
doubtedly the great end for which you 



FROM A PASTOR. 57 

were created and sent here, — is certainly 
your truest honor and happiness, and, if 
you are not to perish, like the poor brute, 
totally and forever in the grave, then this 
is the only course that can render your 
immortality glorious and blessed in that 
eternity to which you are hastening. 

But you say, ' we need not begin the 
course you recommend at our time of 
life. We can at present very well dis- 
pense with religion. We can be suffi- 
ciently happy without it. We are in the 
bright morning of our day. All is fresh 
and beautiful, and smiling about us. Na- 
ture spreads before us the banquet of 
pleasure, our appetite is keen for the 
feast, — it is delicious, and our joy is full 
without the help of religion. And what- 
ever we may hereafter, we can have no 
need of it at present/ So you may think ; 
but come, let us reason together. Let 
us cast a sober eye upon the prospect 
before you, and take a brief survey of 



58 A. PRESENT 

some of the circumstances, some of the 
probable events, changes and exigencies 
of the untried life that awaits you ; and 
let us see if you will not have great, con- 
tinual and urgent need of what you at 
present so lightly esteem. 

I. In the first place, you have this 
moment extreme need of the counsels of 
this heavenly monitor, in your present 
unguarded and exposed condition, which 
you deem so happy while you bid relig- 
ion wait to a more convenient season. 
You need her instructions to cure you of 
that very blindness, which makes you 
think religion may be dispensed with in 
the gay and joyous season of youth. You 
need this light from heaven to dispel 
those cheating phantoms of the imagina- 
tion, and those flattering illusions of 
youthful hope, which make you fancy 
yourselves in a world of unmixed good, 
hastening forward only to scenes of en- 
joyment through paths all strown with 



FROM A PASTOR. 59 

roses, with no thorns, no briers to wound 
you or to impede your steps. You need 
the sober lessons of religion to admonish 
you of this great mistake, and to apprise 
you that much evil is blended with the 
good in human life, — that in the sweetest 
viands of the banquet is concealed the 
subtlest poison, — that under the most 
tempting beds of flowers lurks the ser- 
pent of deadliest venom — that often, when 
you expect only the honey of delight, 
you will find yourselves pierced with the 
sting of pain. You need therefore this 
prudent counsellor to teach you how to 
make the most of the joys that abound at 
your time of life by avoiding the bitter 
consequences of forbidden indulgence or 
excess, which must ever terminate soon or 
late in satiety, disgust and remorse. You 
need this enlightener of the mind to enable 
you to distinguish between those pleas- 
ures, which are innocent, which God 
approves, which leave no after taste of 



60 A PRESENT 

gall, which are attended with no injury 
to the body or the mind, — and those 
which are sinful, which God has inter- 
dicted, which harm yourselves and others, 
which stupify conscience, and which, 
though they may wrap the soul in a mo- 
mentary trance of delight, ultimately leave 
the wretch to weep and to deplore his 
folly in the bitterness of repentance. 
You may thus perceive how greatly you 
need the fear of the Lord, or that relig- 
ious wisdom which it implies, in your first 
setting out in life, that it may guide and 
keep you in the ways of innocence and 
safety. One wrong step in the outset 
may be followed by a train of evil conse- 
quences, which exceed all calculation. 
Nothing is of more importance than for 
the young to begin well, that they early 
commence a right course, — that from the 
first they choose the way in which they 
should go, — that they may proceed on 
their journey warned and aware of the 



FROM A PASTOR. 61 

winding tracks, and devious ways, and 
fatal labyrinths, into which the incautious 
and inexperienced are so easily decoyed. 
One false step will make way for another, 
that will naturally lead you on to a third, 
and your wanderings will probably in- 
crease till you find yourselves so bewild- 
ered in the mazes of error, — so entangled 
in the snares of vice, that you will no 
longer know by what means to extricate 
yourselves, nor how to return to the good 
and secure way from which you have 
strayed. 

Beginning with the fear of the Lord will 
save you from all this ; or if it should not 
entirely, and you should unhappily be led 
astray by the force of evil example and 
the united strength of temptation without 
and passion within, it will afford you the 
only clue, the surest means of return to 
duty. 

II. You need it therefore in order to 
restore you to virtue, when, in an un- 
6 



62 A PRESENT 

guarded moment of inconsideration or 
weakness, you have been drawn aside 
from its peaceful and pleasant paths. 
Wherewith, says holy Scripture, shall a 
young man cleanse his ways ? The an- 
swer implies just what I have been say- 
ing, for it is added, by taking heed thereto 
according to thy word. Except the fear 
of God, or those sentiments of piety 
which it implies have previously and early 
had possession of his mind and heart, the 
young man will not regard the word of 
the Lord so much as to think whether he 
has violated it or not. He will therefore 
feel no solicitude to compare and conform 
his ways to it. He will be likely to go 
on in his ignorance and heedlessness to 
greater lengths of sin. Like all evil 
doers, who fear not God, as the apostle 
remarks of them, waxing worse and worse. 
Whereas, on the contrary, \£the fear of 
the Lord, a religious regard to the Divine 
authority and laws has early been in- 
wrought into his mind, has grown with 



FROM A PASTOR. 63 

his growth and strengthened with his 
strength, when he has been so forgetful, 
and off his guard as to fall into sin— for 
sin deliberately he could not — conscience 
will take the alarm and exert her power 
to reclaim him ; she will not suffer him 
to sleep upon his sins ; she will pursue 
him with her whip of scorpions till he is 
driven to take refuge from the smart of 
her stripes in deep repentance, in setting 
himself seriously to cleanse and correct 
his ways by taking heed to them according 
to God's word. 

III. Again, you need the fear of the 
Lord, the invisible guards and restraints 
of religion to secure you against the 
seductions of unprincipled companions. 
Youth, we know, is pliant as the osier — - 
is credulous, confiding, desirous to please, 
and prone to conform to the opinions and 
wishes of associates. You will be fortu- 
nate indeed if you do not find many bad 
advisers, — many, who by example and 



64 A PRESENT 

persuasion will endeavor to entice you to 
criminal compliances and practices, which 
they call pleasure ; and, if possible, by 
their much fair speech and specious pre- 
tences will cause you to yield. In order 
to accomplish their purpose they will 
hold out to you the most alluring sugges- 
tions and flattering arguments. The fear 
of the Lord, a settled principle of rever- 
ence for the authority and laws of 
Almighty God, can alone keep you from 
falling into the snares of the wicked. It 
will enable you to see through the veil of 
their false pretences — to detect the base- 
ness of their designs, and to calculate the 
miserable end of their ways. When they 
would tempt you to wickedness, it will 
suggest to you the thought that saved 
Joseph when tempted, how can I do this 
great evil and sin against God? And 
your reply to your tempters will be, 
depart from me ye ungodly ; for I will keep 
the commandments of the Lord. 



FROM A PASTOR. 65 

IV. In your amusements again, which 
you follow with so much ardor, you need 
this same guardian and controlling prin- 
ciple to moderate your mirth and to pre- 
serve you from excess, — to regulate your 
imagination and the flow of your spirits, 
so as to render your seasons of relaxation 
and social intercourse innocent, refresh- 
ing, salutary and secure from disgust or 
regret upon a review. Into whatever 
place or company you enter for the pur- 
pose of amusement, if you possess a true 
religious reverence for God, a sense of 
his presence will accompany you, and 
this sentiment will be to you a good an- 
gel to keep you from sinning against him. 
It will lead you to discern and to display 
in your manners and conversation what- 
soever things are decorous, pure, lovely 
and of good report, and will guard you 
from all that is opposed to these. If you 
would all carry with you, my young 
friends, a mind thus influenced and 
6* 



66 A. PRESENT 

guarded, into the social circle, your 
interviews would be doubly delightful, — 
your pleasures of a higher character, as 
your conversations and amusements 
would be far more rational. No one 
would wish to indulge, as there would 
be no one to countenance another, in any 
improprieties or levities of language or 
demeanor, which innocence, decorum or 
maiden modesty forbid. 

I have thus far considered your need 
of the religious principle only in its guid- 
ing and restraining power to keep you 
from folly and sin, and to lead you to 
what is right, safe, and honorable, sup- 
posing all things externally to continue 
with you as prosperous, pleasant and 
agreeable to your wishes, as imagination 
and hope can possibly paint them to you. 

V. But I am to remind you that there 
is a dark as well as a bright side to hu- 
man life. You know not how soon the 
scene may be changed with you. How- 



PROM A PASTOR. 67 

ever your hearts may cheer you in the 
bright and joyous morning of your day, — 
how secure and confident soever you may 
feel in your own strength, in the clear 
sunshine of your prosperity, — in the 
bloom and glow of health and in the 
gayety and buoyancy of youth ; — in the 
days of darkness, (for these days will 
come,) when the black and angry storms 
of adversity shall burst upon your de- 
fenceless head, you will then need some 
better solace, some brighter hope to raise 
and sustain your sinking spirits, some 
safer shelter from the stormy wind and 
tempest, than this world or the things of 
it can give. Then it is, if not before, 
you will perceive that it would have been 
your truest wisdom and happiness to have 
cultivated and cherished the religious 
principle, I am recommending to you, 
from your youth. It is in these hours of 
need that its true value is known and felt 
in its efficacy to compose the troubled 



68 A PRESENT 

spirit and heal the wounded heart. And 
happy are they, yea, thrice happy, whose 
experience in these times of need, can 
bear them witness, how rich and power- 
ful are its consolations in supporting and 
tranquilizing the mind under the pressure 
of calamity and affliction. But if we 
would know its consolations in our days 
of trial and suffering, most certain it is, 
we must begin early, and in our days of 
health and prosperity to acquaint our- 
selves with its nature and to regulate our 
heart and life by its precepts. If God is 
not regarded, nor his favor sought by us, 
till we are driven to have recourse to 
him, as our last resort, we are forewarned 
in his word what we are to expect; — when 
distress and anguish come upon you, then 
shall ye call upon me, but I will not answer; 
ye shall seek me early, but ye shall not find 
me ; because when I called, ye would not 
hearken ; for that ye hated knowledge, and 
did not choose the fear of the Lord. Not 



FROM A PASTOR. 69 

that God ever shuts his ear to true pray- 
er, — but that our calling upon him from 
distress or terror, is not the prayer of 
humble trust and confidence, and there- 
fore cannot bring us comfort and peace, 
which is meant by God's answering when 
we call upon him. 

It appears then that you have need of 
the guiding, restraining, or controlling 
influences of the religious principle in all 
times and circumstances of your youth. 

VI. But you are coming forward, as 
men, to fill the places of your fathers in 
conducting the serious business of life, in 
carrying on the social system, the general 
course of human affairs, and to raise up 
successors to yourselves. 

You have important connections to 
form, new relations to sustain, new duties 
to discharge, and doubtless many trying 
scenes to pass through. In all these the 
religious principle, the wisdom from 
above, which I would persuade you to 



70 A PRESENT 

cultivate and cherish from your youth, is 
indispensably necessary to secure you from 
falling into hurtful errors and from con- 
tracting pernicious habits, to save you, in 
short, from vice, and all the varieties of 
wretchedness to which it leads. 

1. You will need it, in the first place, 
in that most interesting and momentous 
act of your life, the choice of a companion 
to share with you the pleasures and cares 
and changeful fortunes of your earthly 
pilgrimage. Here, if you are not di- 
rected by a spirit of religious caution and 
wisdom, you will be led by passion, which 
is blind, or by caprice, which may change 
the moment the indissoluble tie is formed, 
or by other motives too unworthy to be 
named ; all which must lead to repent- 
ance, a life of discord and a train of evils, 
which, as religion only could have pre- 
vented, so religion alone can remedy, or 
enable you to bear them. Under the 
guidance of this heavenly monitor, you 



FROM A PASTOR. 71 

will be directed in your choice to one, 
who, like yourself, fears the Lord from 
her youth. Your preference will be given 
to those qualities of the mind and heart, 
which will endure and please, when the 
enamel of the skin, when attractions 
merely external shall have faded and 
passed away. You will not suffer im- 
agination to choose for you without 
consulting your reason and the wisdom 
that is from above, which will instruct you 
that favor is deceitful, and that beauty is 
vain, but that a woman who feareth the 
Lord, she shall be praised. 

And might I caution the daughters of 
Zion in an affair, which involves in its 
consequences every thing, next to their 
salvation, most important and dear to 
them, I would warn them that they sooner 
take to their bosom " the green and 
fanged adder," than an unprincipled, 
irreligious, dissipated son of Belial, how- 
ever in other respects agreeable or ac- 



72 A PRESENT 

complished. Who can touch pitch and 
not be denied ? Who can be linked to 
corruption and not be polluted ? It is 
impossible that a man not habitually in- 
fluenced by religious principle, can make 
a good husband or good parent, or render 
the wedded life of a virtuous woman 
happy. 

2. You will, again, find the religious 
principle necessary to you in encountering 
with cheerfulness and fortitude the cares, 
the arduous duties and trials, of domestic 
life. For, under the most favorable aus- 
pices, you will have much to bear, as 
well as much to enjoy. It is religion 
alone, be assured, that can secure your 
dwelling from the strife of tongues, from 
discontent and gloom, and weariness of 
life, when the tide of your domestic affairs 
sets adverse toy our wishes. It is religion, 
which exalts, and consecrates and crowns 
the joys of wedded love, which keeps 
unimpaired and makes perennial the sweet 



FROM A PASTOR. 73 

confidences, the household affections and 
endearments, with which a stranger in- 
termeddleth not — and which renders 
home the asylum of peace, of order and 
comfort, of all the kindly charities and 
dear affinities of nature, which give to life 
its sweetest relish and form the nearest 
approach we can make to the happiness, 
which was lost in paradise. 

In your public transactions, once more, 
with your fellow men, — in all your vari- 
ous intercourse with a selfish and soiling 
world, you will need great strength of 
religious principle to regulate your de- 
sires and pursuit of gain, — to keep you 
just and upright in your dealings, — to 
control the unruly spirit of ambition, — to 
govern your angry passions, that you 
neither speak nor act with rashness, — to 
dispose you always to do to others, as 
you would that they should do to you, — 
and at all times to hold fast your integ- 
rity, and not to let it go so long as you 
7 



74 A PRESENT 

live in defiance of the seductions of 
pleasure, of wealth, or worldly honor. 
t And lastly, you will need from your 
own confession, religion in old age and 
at the hour of death. Yes, you will indeed 
need it to lighten the burden of years, to 
•give dignity to the hoary head, and to 
support you under your infirmities, — to 
brighten your prospects in the evening 
of your day, — to compensate and soothe 
the decay of animal life and its pleasures 
with the hope of renewed vigor, and a 
happier life to come ; which shall know 
no intermission or end in God's heavenly 
presence for ever. Especially in the 
last dread moment, which lifts the cur- 
tain of eternity, — and this event will 
come to most of you before you will 
have approached the period of old age, — 
in that solemn hour you will need all the 
support and comfort, which religion can 
impart, to sustain and speak peace to the 



FROM A PASTOR. 75 

soul, and give it a sweet earnest, a joy- 
ful assurance of a blessed rest with the 
spirits of the just made perfect, who can 
not die any more, says our Lord, for they 
are equal unto the angels ; and are the chil- 
dren of God, being the children of the resur- 
rection. But you certainly know that you 
can not have the aids and consolations of 
religion in these hours of need, — they 
will not come at your most earnest call, 
when you will most need them, — unless 
you early acquaint yourselves with re- 
ligion both by study and practice, unless 
you make it your companion, your coun- 
sellor and guide through all the stages of 
life,— unless you fear the Lord from your 
youth. 

I pray God that you may find religion, 
pure, rational, undefiled religion, — what 
I am sure it is to all who sincerely em- 
brace it, the only guide as I have said, 
that can conduct your steps with safety 
through " the slippery paths of youth," 



76 A PRESENT FROM A PASTOR. 

the certain pledge and security of a vir- 
tuous, useful and honorable manhood, 
the only refuge of grey hairs, the sole 
antidote of death, and the precious earn- 
est of immortal joys. That it may be 
all these to each of my young auditors 
may God grant, for his infinite mercy's 
sake, — Amen, 



77 



DISCOURSE III. 

CONSIDERATIONS THAT ADDRESS THEMSELVES TO THE 
YOUNG AS MOTIVES TO EARLY RELIGION. 

Ecclesiastes XII, 1. — Remember now 
thy Creator in the. days of thy youth. 

Youth, in all ages and languages, has 
been likened to the spring, the gay and 
flowery prime of the year, the genial 
season of beauty and gladness. Like 
that happy prime and holiday of nature, 
youth is the period of life that is most 
replete with gayety, with lightness of 
heart and joyousness of spirit. The feel- 
ings are then most warm and vivid, the 
heart most susceptible and most ardent 
in the pursuit of pleasure. The youth 
has not yet been taught by disappoint- 
ment to distrust the delusive promises of 
hope. He has not yet been apprised of 

the perils and snares and nameless ills, 

•7* 



78 A PRESENT 

which beset the path of life, as we ad- 
vance in it towards the goal of age. He 
enters upon an untried world, which 
presents to his credulous, eager eye, none 
but fair and flattering objects, all wearing 
a bright and joyous aspect, and inviting 
his embrace with the irresistible charm 
of novelty. He looks forward with rap- 
ture upon the elysium before him, so 
variegated with beauty and so stored with 
pleasure, that he is only in doubt where 
to cull the first flower, what delicious 
fruit he shall first taste, and which path 
to pursue of the many, all of which lead 
alike to the bowers of bliss. While 
imagination views the clusters of grapes, 
the pomegranates and the figs, and hope 
already begins to taste the milk and honey 
of his visionary Canaan, should sage ex- 
perience tell the young deluded enthusi- 
ast, that he had searched the land, — that 
it was indeed a goodly land, — (see Num. 
xiii. 17, &c,) but that he had found the 



FROM A PASTOR. 79 

enemy which possessed it strong and 
numerous ; — that disappointment and sor- 
row dwell in the valley towards the 
south, — perfidy, injustice and oppression 
in the high places, — misfortune, penury, 
toil and suffering upon the bleak and cold 
borders of the sea; — and, moreover, that 
there are the giants, disease and sin, — 
the incredulous youth, no doubt, would 
reply to his hoary-headed counsellor, 
" thou hast brought an evil and slander- 
ous report of the land thou hast searched.'' 
He would sally forth regardless of the 
remonstrances of experience, and with a 
heart bounding with expectation, would 
travel on, till the briers that tear his feet 
and the thorns that wound his fingers, 
"feelingly persuade" him that the path 
of life is not covered with a carpet of 
velvet, and the borders thereof beset 
with nothing but roses. 

It is thus from painful experience that 
the young, for the most part, are taught 



80 A PRESENT 

to distrust the illusive visions of hope, 
and to circumscribe their extravagant ex- 
pectations within the sober boundaries of 
truth and reality. They might however, 
save themselves much of the regret and 
misery, which their erroneous notions in 
early life occasion them, if they would 
listen to the teachings of the wise, who, 
having passed the period of youthful 
hope and illusion, have proved how wild 
and chimerical are the visions of youth, 
— how fallacious is the expectation of 
uninterrupted prosperity and enjoyment 
upon earth. But their eagerness in the 
pursuit of pleasure, and their unwilling- 
ness to believe that the career, which 
looks so promising and pleasant in the 
beginning, will terminate in disappoint- 
ment, in vanity and vexation of spirit , too 
generally prevent their profiting from the 
admonitions of age and reflection. 

Nevertheless, how slow soever the 
young may be to credit the report of those, 



FROM A PASTOR. 81 

who have seen the sore travail, which God 
hath given to the sons of men to be exercised 
therewith, yet they may be assured that 
the days of darkness will come, and that 
they may be many. However their 
hearts may cheer them now in the days 
of their youth, — how secure soever they 
may feel themselves in the glow of health 
and the bright sunshine of their prosperi- 
ty, — when the heart shall be weighed 
down with the burden of sorrow and 
affliction, — when the dark storms of ad- 
versity shall gather over their head, — 
they will need some better solace, some 
brighter hope, to raise and cheer their 
dejected spirits, — some safer shelter from 
the stormy wind tempest, than this world, 
or the men of it can give. This better 
solace, this brighter hope, this most de- 
sirable shelter all may secure to them- 
selves, who will follow the direction in 
the text, and Remember now their Creator 
in the days of their youth. The young are 



82 A PRESENT 

admonished in these words to have early 
in mind their relation to God, as they are 
his offspring, — to preserve an habitual 
sense of their dependence on Him for 
existence and all its blessings, — to rev- 
erence, love, and obey him, — to seek his 
favor by prayer, and constant desire to 
do his will, — in a word, to be virtuous 
and religious. The reasonableness of 
thus remembering their Creator in youth 
I shall attempt to show from several 
considerations. 

I. I observe, in the first place, that, 
in youth the soul is most susceptible of 
culture, more readily receives impressions 
of any kind, than in more mature years. 
And, as it is at that time of life, when the 
blank pages of the understanding, if I may 
so speak, are fast filling up, if good and 
virtuous impressions are not made, those 
of a contrary character will intrude them- 
selves. Every soil of any strength, if it 
be not sown with good seed, when the 



FROM A PASTOR. 83 

genial warmth of spring wakes into life the 
vegetable tribes, will be over-run with 
useless, or with noxious weeds. While 
the character is thus in its tender, embryo 
state, it more easily receives a religious 
bias, than in after years, when the heart 
has grown callous and stubborn by time 
and long inclination to crooked ways. 
The selfish passions and wrong propen- 
sities, which grow out of our animal 
nature, are then weaker and more easily 
subdued. Like the limbs of the new- 
born babe to the swathing of the nurse, 
they are pliant and yielding to the disci- 
pline and restraints of reason and relig- 
ion. It is less difficult then to awaken 
and cherish those better feelings and 
affections of the heart and sentiments of 
the mind, which constitute a religious 
temper, a devout and heavenly spirit ; 
such as pious reverence towards God, a 
warm and heartfelt gratitude for his 
countless bounties and mercies — filial fear 



84 A PRESENT 

of offending him, — admiration of his pow- 
er, wisdom and goodness from a view of 
the works of his hand, so glorious, so 
beautiful and beneficent, — a lively and 
thankful sense of the love of God in the 
unspeakable gift of his Son to a benighted, 
sinful and wretched world, — whose errand 
upon earth, whose life, example, in- 
structions and miracles of mercy, whose 
sufferings and death, resurrection and 
ascension can hardly fail to arrest the 
attention, to impress the mind, and to fill 
the warm and ingenuous heart of the 
young with adoring love and earnest 
wishes to be like the Saviour. A mind, 
a heart thus affected and disposed at any 
season of life is a temple, in which Je- 
hovah will delight to dwell. More 
especially in youth, the sacrifice, that is 
offered from such an altar will be a sweet 
savor unto the Lord,— a perfume pure 
and holy, "that incense, whose fragrance 
reaches heaven." As a type of this early 



FROM A PASTOR. 85 

devotion of the youthful heart to God, 
Jehovah commanded his ancient people, 
that the firstlings of their flocks, the first 
fruits of the earth, and the first flowers 
of the spring should be set apart as an 
acceptable offering to himself. Our Sa- 
viour, when he beheld the ingenuous coun- 
tenance of the young man, who had kept 
the commandments from his early youth, 
solicitous, as he was, to learn the way to 
eternal life, beholding loved him. And if 
the approbation of man can add anything 
to your happiness, while you have that of 
your God and Saviour, you may be sure 
of the suffrage of the wise and good in 
your favor, whose praise alone is worth 
the ambition of the young or the ma- 
ture. 

II. A second consideration, which 
addresses itself to your desire of happi- 
ness, is the satisfaction which results 
from an early and uniform course of 
virtue based upon religious principle. 



86 A PRESENT 

That the ways of wisdom, i. e. religious 
obedience to the will of God, are ways 
of pleasantness and peace, is most certain. 
All, who have walked in these ways from 
their early days, have found them so, and 
have never regretted the choice they have 
made, as is always the case with the 
early vicious and irreligious ; but have 
invariably found their satisfaction in- 
crease, in proportion as they have ad- 
vanced in them. They will tell you with 
one voice "this is the path, that leads to 
happiness, — follow us. We have found 
in it a peace, which the world cannot 
give nor take away, — a peace that passeth 
understanding, a joy, with ichich a stranger 
intermeddletli not." 

Although this exalted peace and joy 
may not be the immediate result on 1 en- 
tering a religious course, yet the gradual, 
increasing, and ultimate effect of such 
a life, shall be quietness and assurance for- 
ever. At first, it may cost the young 



FROM A PASTOR. 87 

disciple some painful efforts, and repeat- 
ed hard struggles to resist and vanquish 
the solicitations of appetite and passion, 
the force of example and the entice- 
ments of pleasure, — may for a while, 
require of him to maintain a severe con- 
flict with foes without and foes within, 
— to combat and subdue the wayward 
desires, devices, and treacheries of his 
own deceitful heart and imagination. — 
But let it be remembered, that the diffi- 
culty of the contest bears no proportion 
to the prize of the victory, the severity 
of the struggle to the joys of the conquest. 
After the enemy within and from without 
shall have been vanquished, — after the 
law in the members shall have been 
brought into subjection to the law of the 
mind ; — after the disentanglement of the 
will from the yoke of bondage, which the 
tyranny of the world, the passions and 
animal appetites early impose upon the 
young, if left to their own inclinations 
and inexperience; — after having thus 



88 A PRESENT 

attained in some good measure, to the 
glorious moral freedom, wherewith Christ 
makes free his sincere followers, and 
standing fast therein, — submitting only to 
the reasonable restraints of enlightened 
conscience and the precepts of the Sa- 
viour, — the happy tranquillity and peace 
of mind, which are then experienced, 
will enable the christian disciple to go on 
his way rejoicing, — will fit him for the 
fulfillment of every duty with cheerful- 
ness, and heighten his relish for every 
rational and innocent enjoyment. 

Religion prohibits only the indulgence 
of those passions and appetites, which, if 
allowed to reign without check or con- 
trol, are the greatest enemies to our 
health, the chief disturbers of our re- 
pose, the hardest taskmasters we can 
serve. Whereas those dispositions and 
affections, which it requires us to cherish 
and exercise, contribute in the highest 
degree to the health and strength of the 
body, to the ease and comfort 



FROM A PASTOR. 89 

mind, and constitute the very essence of 
human happiness. What cheerful seren- 
ity, what a bright diffusion of quiet joy 
and gladness, is perpetually spread through 
the soul of the established Christian, who 
lives in the habitual exercise of those 
heavenly dispositions and Divine virtues, 
which the apostle so beautifully describes 
as the fruit of the spirit, — love, joy, peace, 
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith- 
fulness, meekness, temperance. 

You have only to think, for one mo- 
ment, of the different inclinations, aims 
and pursuits of the virtuous and vicious, — 
to contrast their characters and actions, 
to determine which are most likely to find 
that happiness, for which we were made, 
and which we all so eagerly, covet. In 
whose bosom is happiness most likely to 
be found 'an inmate, — in his, who is the 
dissolute slave of illicit indulgence, of 
licentious appetites, — or in his, who 
keeps himself pure and unspotted from 



90 A PRESENT 

the corruptions, that are in the world through 
lust ? Will happiness abide in that heart, 
in which anger, wrath, strife and envy 
are suffered to reign and riot at will, — 
the imaginations of which are estranged 
from God and goodness, and are only 
familiar with evil, — or with him whose 
heart is the tranquil seat of good and 
kindly affections, of virtuous aims, and 
benevolent desires, full of mercy and good 
fruits! Will you look for happiness in 
the man or woman, who lives the weak 
and subdued victim of an unnatural appe- 
tite for strong drinks, — merging in habit- 
ual excess all that is most precious and 
valuable in this life to the extinction of 
all hope for the future, — or in the self- 
governed, strong in the strength of early 
sobriety, who sit down hale and cheerful 
to a frugal temperate table, — who look 
not at the wine when it is red, who are not 
deceived by strong drink ? Are either the 
young or the mature, think you, in the 



FROM A PASTOR. 91 

way to happiness, who resort either to 
the coarse or more refined haunts of 
idleness and dissipation; — or is it not 
rather the sober and industrious, who 
seek for happiness in their duties, in 
attention to their proper business, and in 
the exercise of the domestic affections, — 
in reading, reflection, conversation, and 
in the enjoyment of all those quiet and 
cordial satisfactions, which are to be 
found at home, by the genial fireside ? 
Will peace dwell with the deceitful and 
false-hearted, in the dark windings of 
whose bosom lurk treachery, craft, fraud, 
and perfidy, — with the servile plodder 
after gain, always intent upon his worldly 
schemes, — with the proud seeker after 
human applause and distinction, always 
on the rack with ambition, — with the 
contentious, who delight in strife, in 
feuds and discord, — with the malevolent 
and selfish, who are always plotting 
mischief to others and unjust advantage 



92 A PRESENT 

to themselves, — or with those, who seek 
it in that love, which neither worketh nor 
wisheth ill to our neighbor, in that sinceri- 
ty, which always speaks the truth in love, — 
in humility, which seeks not for itself great 
things, — in that vjisdom, in short, tuhich is 
first pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to 
be entreated, without partiality and without 
hypocrisy ? Does he feel the truest satis- 
faction, whose heart and hands are closed 
and shut fast, as with clasps of steel, 
against the wants and distresses of his 
suffering fellow-creatures, or, if he gives, 
gives grudgingly, as if it were parting 
with a right eye, — or is it the benevolent 
and humane, whose heart and hands are 
"open as day to melting charity," — who 
gives cheerfully and is blessed in blessing 
others ? Is happiness, think you, the 
portion of those, who are afraid to look 
into their own heart, conscious, as they 
are, of living in habitual violation of their 
religious duties, alienated from God, un- 



FROM A PASTOR. 93 

prepared to meet the summons of death, 
always intending to repent before they 
die, yet held fast by habit in the bonds of 
iniquity, and dying at last in the gall of 
bitterness ; — or is it not the exclusive por- 
tion of the virtuous, the sincere and 
faithful Christian, whose chief joy it is 
to hold frequent communion with his own 
heart and the great Searcher of all hearts, 
— who reverences his character and laws, 
and who with humble confidence, hopes 
in his mercy, in whose view death is 
divested of its terrors, and w r hose last end 
is peace ? 

In view of this brief sketch of these 
different characters, and of the different 
issues to which they lead, is there one of 
my young auditors but is ready to say, 
" Let me live the life and die the death 
of the righteous/ ' 

III. And that you may thus live and 
die, be persuaded early to commence a 
religious life from a consideration of the 



94 A PRESENT 

nature of habit. Habit, it has been cor- 
rectly said, is second nature. We are 
all indeed the creatures of habit. All 
our virtues must become habitual before 
they are justly entitled to the name. 
The aggregate habits of a man constitute 
his character. It is not an occasional 
address to heaven, a prayer put up in 
distress or in the immediate prospect of 
danger, that makes a pious man; but 
regular, daily devotion to God ; an habit- 
ual sense of his universal presence ; and 
reverence of his glorious perfections. It 
is not a single act of beneficence, that 
makes a charitable man ; but the habitual 
doing of kind and friendly offices. And 
so of all the virtues. The same is true 
of wrong or vicious actions. It is not a 
single instance of excess, that brands the 
character with intemperance ; but the 
habitual indulgence of an inordinate ap- 
petite for stimulating drinks. Habits, 
formed in youth, commonly adhere to the 



FROM A PASTOR. 95 

character through life. From the hue 
and complexion of the early dispositions 
and principles, the after life, in a great 
measure, takes its coloring. So much is 
the future conduct and character influ- 
enced by the early bias given to the 
mind, the inclinations and habits, that it 
has long passed for a maxim, "that what 
a man is at twenty, he will be, in a great- 
er or less degree at sixty." 

How infinitely important is it then that 
the young should remember now their Cre- 
ator in the days of their youth! You, 
who are just beginning life, cannot be too 
often, or too seriously reminded, that the 
character, which you are now forming, 
may determine your eternal destiny. 
Perhaps, on the course of conduct, on 
the forming habits of this year, possibly, 
on the improvement, or abuse, of a much 
shorter period, your everlasting interest 
may depend. Pause, then, let me be- 
seech you, and reflect, before you ad- 



96 A PRESENT 

/ 

vance too far, — whether there be in you 
any evil way, — whether in secret you 
do not cherish some easily besetting sin, 
— whether you do not allow yourself in 
thoughts, inclinations, words, or actions, 
or neglect of duties, which, if persisted 
in, will lead to vice and misery, — whether 
you do not forget the God that made you, 
and rob him of that reverence, and those 
daily expressions of love and gratitude, 
which are due from you to your Almighty 
Maker, your gracious Preserver and con- 
stant Benefactor. Begin well, and it is 
morally certain, that you will go on and 
end well. But, if you will not begin 
with the fear of the Lord, which is the be- 
ginning of wisdom, — if instead of fleeing, 
you rashly pursue those dangerous ways, 
those forbidden paths, which lead down 
to the chambers of death, — if your be- 
ginning be bad, your progress will be 
worse, your end inevitable ruin anc 
woe. It will be in vain, that you ma} 



FROM A PASTOR. 97 

determine, when you grow old, that you 
will repent, and forsake your evil ways and 
turn unto the Lord, and live soberly, and 
righteously, and godly the rest of your life. 
If you wait for that time, you will see 
your error, believe me, when it will be 
too late to repair it. Can the Ethiopian 
change his skin, or the leopard his spots ? 
then may you, who are accustomed to do evil, 
learn to do ivell. 

IV. Lastly, let me earnestly urge 
you to the early remembrance of your 
Creator, to commence early a sober, 
righteous and godly life, from a consid- 
eration of the uncertainty of life to the 
young, as well as the mature, the cer- 
tainty of death, and the possibility of its 
immediate approach. 

" Death's shafts fly thick," and neither 
health, nor youth, nor strength, nor 
beauty, nor wealth, nor wisdom can hold 
out a shield, that will surely guard us 
against them. On every side we see our 
9 



98 w A PRESENT 

friends drop off, like leaves in autumn. 
We follow them to their place of silence, 
— to that bourne, whence no traveler 
returns ; — we see them consigned to 
dust, and mingle with the dead ; yet, 
strange to tell, " we lay it not to heart." 
We give a sigh, a tear or two perhaps, 
to the memory of the departed, and we 
return to our homes and occupations, to 
our farms and our merchandize, as un- 
concerned, as if we drew immortal 
breath. Strange, that we never think 
of death, and of ourselves at the same 
time ! Do we need arguments to con- 
vince us that we are mortal ? Our fathers, 
our coevals, and many a youth who began 
life with us, — where are they? Gone the 
way of all the earth. Who of us has not 
been called to mourn the departure of 
some friend or relative ? We have in- 
deed seen all ages borne promiscuously 
to the grave, the house appointed for all 
living. One has died in his full strength, 



FROM A PASTOR. 99 

— another has languished long in bitter- 
ness of soul. One has been suddenly 
whelmed in a watery grave, another 
fallen the victim of disease far away from 
home and friends. One has been snatch- 
ed away by fatal casualty, another gone 
lingering after, by slow and natural 
decay. God has changed their countenance 
and called them away. The eye that hath 
seen them shall see them no more. The pla- 
ces that have known them shall know them 
no more. We shall go to them, but they 
will not return to us. I do not advert to 
these melancholy ravages of death to 
revive those sorrows of the bereaved, 
which have been laid to rest by time. I 
do it, not to recall to your remembrance 
those scenes and images of mournful re- 
gret and sadness, which have passed 
away like a troubled dream or vision of 
the night, — not to open afresh those 
wounds which have ceased to bleed, — 
not to renew the anguish and the grief 



100 A PRESENT 

at parting with the dying, which may 
have long since been hushed in the bosom 
of pious submission to the will of God. I 
do it to bring home to the minds of us all 
the salutary recollection that we have 
to die, — especially to impress it upon 
the minds of the young, who are natu- 
rally prone to presume upon many com- 
ing years of health and. pleasure, — who 
are apt to put far from them the evil 
day, and to think seldom or never upon 
their last inevitable hour. 

The day of our death is wisely con- 
cealed from us. We know not at what 
hour we may be called away, whether in 
the morning, meridian, or evening of 
our day. And it is of small moment when 
we are to die. But it is of infinite mo- 
ment that we should be always prepared 
for death. It would profit us little, nay, 
it might be our bane to know the exact 
number of days we have to live. But it 
will profit us much so to number our days, 



FROM A PASTOR. 101 

thai we may apply our hearts unto wis- 
dom. 

Let me hope that the considerations, 
that have been offered, may have their 
due weight and influence to engage the 
young of my charge to remember now their 
Creator in the days of their youth. Wait 
not for a more convenient season. A bet- 
ter you can never have ; and you may be 
called suddenly away, as others have 
been before you. * Ask yourselves, each 
of you, if God should require your soul 
this night, could you hope to meet your 
Judge in peace ? Conscience must give 
a doubtful response I fear, to many of 
you. Can it be then that you will con- 
tinue unconcerned and at ease in this 
uncertainty, — that you will waste in in- 
dolence, in folly, in thoughtlessness, if 
not in sin, " the life which Divine com- 
passion spares,' ' — that you will live on, 
as if to learn to die were no concern of 
yours 1 Well might the poet exclaim, — 
9* 



102 A. PRESENT 

" more than satish ! 
For creatures of a day, in gamesome mood, 
To frolic on eternity's dread brink 
Unapprehensive, when for aught we know 
The very first swollen surge shall sweep us in !" 

While you, who are in the morning of 
your day, see your elders around you 
unconcerned, regardless of their highest 
interests, wholly immersed in the cares, 
the riches, or pleasures of this life, you 
may imagine it is time enough for you to 
think of better things. While you see 
grey hairs still stooping to the earth and 
picking up straws, as it were, instead of 
seeking and securing the pearl of gr^at 
price, a heart right with God, — and 
pluming their spirits for their speedy 
flight to heaven, — you may imagine you 
have excuse for thinking little of the 
world to come. But their example should 
be to you a beacon to warn, and not a 
pattern to copy. The aged must soon 
die ; but the young are not secure. If 
the dry leaves of autumn must fall with 



FROM A PASTOR. 103 

the first rising breeze, are not the green 
buds of spring sometimes nipt by un- 
timely frost ? Trust not then to some 
uncertain future time your preparation 
for death and the life to come. Be wise 
to-day; — to day, if ye will hearken to 
the voice of God, harden not your hearts, 
while it is called to day. Seek ye the Lord, 
while he may be found, call upon him while 
he is near. Now is the accepted time; be- 
hold, now is the day of salvation. 



104 



DISCOURSE IV. 

CONSIDERATIONS THAT ADDRESS THEMSELVES TO THE 
YOUNG, &.c, CONTINUED. 

Ecclesiastes, XII, 1. — Remember now 
thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while 
the evil days come not, nor the years draw 
nigh, when thou shalt say I have no pleasure 
in them. 

PART I. 

When we address the young we ad- 
dress in respect to the interests of reli- 
gion both in relation to themselves and 
to the community, the most important 
class of our hearers. We address a class 
whose mind and character are yet un- 
formed, but are rapidly forming, and who 
are themselves to form and to determine 
the character of the next generation. 
We address a class, on whom the eyes 
of the virtuous and religious of mature 



FROM A PASTOR. 105 

'years are turned with a deep and earnest 
solicitude to see whether they are to 
leave behind them a race, whose virtue, 
whose morality will rest upon the basis 
of an early cherished and deep felt piety 
and established faith in the Christian 
doctrine of immortality and righteous re- 
tribution, — or a race of mere worldly 
men and women, whose virtue has no 
better foundation than a cautious, calcu- 
lating prudence, whose morality is only 
to do as others do. We address a class 
of immortal beings, whose character will 
derive its complexion from their early 
principles and habits, and whose char- 
acter thus formed will determine their 
condition for eternity. We address a 
class, over whom no vicious propensity 
or corrupt practice has yet, as we may 
hope, established the despotic dominion 
of habit, — over whom the allurements of 
a mere earthly ambition, or the seduc- 
tions of a life of mere animal pleasure 



106 A PRESENT 

have not yet acquired a fixed ascendency. 
But it is a discouraging consideration 
that we address a class naturally indisposed 
to reflection, whose attention is so occu- 
pied with the amusements of youth and 
the gay visions of youthful hope, that the 
serious subject of religion, their duties as 
immortal beings, timely preparation for 
death, judgment and eternity, can rarely 
find a place in their thoughts much less 
gain a permanent hold and influence upon 
their heart and conduct. It is a dis- 
couraging thought, moreover, that we 
address a class, who can plead the exam- 
ple of so many of their elders in excuse 
for their neglect of the Christian ordi- 
nance of the Lord's supper, which was 
instituted and enjoined upon all believers, 
as an avowal and pledge of their faith in 
Christ, and their determination to live 
and die as his disciples. With the ex- 
ception of here and there one brought to 
reflection and a serious frame of mind by 



FROM A PASTOR. 107 

affliction, or some affecting providence or 
awakening call from God, we find the 
young as slow to confess their Saviour 
before men, as their seniors, who seem 
to regard a profession of faith in Christ, 
evinced by joining in the commemorative 
rite of the supper, as an exploded cere- 
mony, with which enlightened and lib- 
eral men have nothing to do. 

I will not cease, however, to address 
myself to the young, who are the hope of 
society, the hope of the church, and to 
whom the ministers of religion must look 
if any where for encouragement, for fruit 
and success in their ministry. I would 
therefore call once more upon the young 
before me in the language of earnest and 
affectionate entreaty, of parental counsel 
and solemn admonition, as in the text, to 
remember now their Creator in the days of 
their youth. 

Let us first inquire what is implied in 
the admonition to remember your Cre- 
ator ; — in the next place, why with 



108 A PRESENT 

such peculiar emphasis and solemnity 
you are enjoined to remember your Cre- 
ator in the season of youth ; and in the 
third place I will suggest some of the 
motives and inducements to early piety, 
that seem to me most worthy of your 
serious consideration. 

I. I would remark, in the first place, 
that the language of the text, is eminently 
beautiful and appropriate to the grand 
object of every religious monitor of the 
young. It implies all that most espe- 
cially requires to be corrected in the 
young. It implies what is the very ground 
and reason of the admonition in the text, 
that unreflecting levity of mind, that in- 
consideration and indisposition to think 
with seriousness upon the subjects per- 
taining to religion, the objects of faith, 
the things that are unseen and eternal, which 
are the usual and characteristic defects 
of youth. It implies what is too generally 
true of the mature, as well as of the 



FROM A PASTOR. 109 

young, that their thoughts are occupied 
about every other subject rather than their 
Creator. It implies what is indeed the 
source of the error to be corrected that 
they do not like to retain God in their 
thoughts. It implies that they yield 
themselves up tp the influence of present 
objects, and to the dominion of those 
passions and inclinations, which naturally 
dispose them to forget God, — to forget 
that he is the ever present author and 
supporter of their existence, happiness 
and hopes, and to whom, as the source of 
every blessing, their earliest thoughts and 
most grateful affections ought habitually 
to turn. All this is certainly implied in 
the admonition before us. For, if the 
young were not prone to forget their Cre- 
ator, there would have been no occasion 
for this and similar injunctions so earnestly 
addressed to the young in the Scriptures 
of the Old and New Testaments. 

For the young to remember their Cre- 
10 



110 A PRESENT 

ator, then, implies that they awake from 
this inconsideration and forgetfulness, that 
they seriously and reverently call to mind 
the great though unseen Being that made 
them, and for what purposes they were 
made and are preserved. To remember 
God is to think of him habitually, to feel 
that we are passing life in his great and 
hallowed presence, to realize that in him 
we live, and move, and have our being. It is 
to have the conviction fixed deep in the 
mind, that while we live unmindful of 
God, estranged and alienated from him, 
we cannot in this state be the objects of 
his approbation and favor, nor be fitted, 
if we die in this state, for those joys in 
the heavenly world, which await only 
those, who are qualified in temper, in love 
and likeness to God, to associate with the 
loving and pure in heart in the community 
of the blessed. Not only this ; but to 
remember your Creator, as the text en- 
joins, is to feel your dependence upon 



FROM A PASTOR. Ill 

him, to realize his government over you, 
that as he supports you by his providence, 
you are bound to submit to his authority 
and guidance, — that as your supreme 
benefactor he has the highest possible 
claim to your earliest and best affections 
and obedience. To remember your Cre- 
ator is to carry with you the thought 
wherever you go, that you cannot go from 
his presence, or escape the notice of his 
eye, — that he surrounds your bed and 
your path, — that he is witness to your 
most secret thoughts and desires, — that 
there is no place where the workers of 
iniquity can hide themselves, — that God 
will hereafter bring every work into judg- 
ment with every secret thing, whether it be 
good, or whether it be evil. To remember 
your Creator is, in short, to acquaint 
yourself with his will and your duty and 
destination, as disclosed and made intelli- 
gible to the humblest capacity in the 
scriptures ; — to devote to God the dew of 



112 A PRESENT 

your youth, — to give him your heart, — to 
serve him by a diligent and virtuous im- 
provement of your time and faculties, — 
to prefer the approval of God and your 
conscience above every earthly good, — 
to turn away from the vices and follies to 
which the young are peculiarly liable, and 
to follow the instructions, to cherish the 
spirit and make the heavenly and divine 
life of Jesus your standard of duty. 

II. This you are to do in the days of 
your youth. Why, we are to inquire in 
the next place, you are so earnestly ex- 
horted to this in the days of your youth ? 
Why, indeed, are there so many calls and 
admonitions addressed to the young in 
particular to be religious 1 You cannot 
be ignorant that the scriptures abound 
with exhortations to the young to devote 
their earliest affections to God. You are 
exhorted to seek God early and are as- 
sured that thus sought he will be found 
of you. Exhort young men, says the 



FROM A PASTOR. 113 

Apostle, to be sober minded. The wisdom 
from above thus calls to the young, hear- 
ken unto me, ye children, for blessed are 
they that keep my v:ays. God is elsewhere 
represented as saying to the young, Wilt 
thou not from this time, cry unto me, My 
Father, thou art the guide of my youth ? 
And in the beautiful chapter which be- 
gins with the text, you are urged to the 
early remembrance of your Creator by 
the most serious and affecting considera- 
tions. On the other hand, you are warned 
that if you early abandon yourselves to 
forgetfulness of your Creator, to the un- 
controlled indulgence of youthful lusts, 
walking in the ways of your own heart, 
and in the sight of your own eyes, for all 
these things God will bring thee into judg- 
ment. The God that made you, by whose 
spirit all these exhortations and warnings 
were dictated, who knows all your frame 
and how the true ends and happiness of 
your being can be best secured, seeing 
10* 



114 A PRESENT 

the need you have of them, has, in his 
paternal wisdom and love, addressed to 
you these earnest and pressing calls to 
be early religious. It is a law of the 
nature your Creator has given you, that 
youth is the best time to seek him, — that 
the religion, the piety, which is associated 
and as I may say incorporated with the 
early thoughts and affections of the ex- 
panding mind and heart, is the only relig- 
ion, the only piety that will be felt and 
operate upon the character in mature 
manhood. God sees, we may believe, 
with a Father's pity and concern, those 
untaught, unreflecting and unguided souls, 
which came into life all pure and spotless 
from his hand, early seduced and led 
astray by pleasure and corrupted by vice, 
unmindful of their Maker, of his laws and 
their immortal destination, — slighting the 
mercy and the grace that would save them, 
and recklessly following the impulses of 
passion and appetite, in the way that 



FROM A PASTOR. 115 

leadeth to utter reprobation and woe. 
According to those laws, which he has 
established, God sees that among those 
who have corrupted their ways, the most 
hopeless of reform are those, who re- 
membered not their Creator in the days 
of their youth. For this reason the young 
are admonished with such peculiar so- 
lemnity that if they forget God and the 
duties they owe to their Maker in the 
morning of life, the danger and the prob- 
ability is that they will never think of 
these duties to any purpose or effect, 
when they grow old, when the pleasures 
and business of life shall lose their at- 
tractions. 

I would not by this remark be under- 
stood to mean that even the aged, who 
have lived without God even from their 
youth, may not turn to God with a sincere 
and contrite heart even at the eleventh 
hour. The momentous and affecting 
considerations presented in the gospel, 



116 A PRESENT 

enforced by the spirit and providences of 
God, have in every age subdued and 
transformed the heart and temper of the 
most obdurate and inveterate transgress- 
ors, who have grown old in irreligion 
and sin. These rare instances serve to 
show that it is never too late to make the 
attempt to reform, to seek from God a 
new heart, a new will, and to live a new 
life. But from the nature of habit and 
the ordinary operations of God's spirit, 
and the known lessons of experience, by 
which we are to govern ourselves in 
moral and spiritual, as in temporal con- 
cerns, there are various and strong rea- 
sons to evince that youth is the season 
most fit and favored of God for attending 
to religion, for commencing a religious 
life. 

III. 1. As proof of this, consider, in 
the first place, the imperceptible formation 
and unyielding force of habit. The first 
step in guilt is allowing the secret wish 



FROM A PASTOR. 117 

or inclination for some criminal indul- 
gence to find a resting place in the imag- 
ination. Conscience at first remonstrates ; 
but by thinking often upon the pleasure 
or advantage of the forbidden act it is 
soon silenced. This internal monitor 
and guide, if not obeyed, loses by degrees 
its influence. This is called in Scripture 
grieving the Spirit of God, And when 
this still small voice within is silenced, 
God is said to take his Holy Spirit from 
us. What was at first done timidly, re- 
luctantly and from the strong impulse of 
passion or appetite comes at length to be 
practiced without fear or hesitation, that 
is, becomes a habit, a regular thing, 
which is repeated almost without a feeling 
or consciousness that it is wrong, a viola- 
tion or dereliction of duty. Every sin, 
every vicious disposition or habit grows 
out of this indulged inclination or desire 
for such objects or gratifications, as are 
criminal or of pernicious tendency. So 



118 A PRESENT 

long as the young live unmindful of their 
Creator and negligent of the duties of 
religion, every day is carrying forward 
this process of confirming them in habits 
of irreligion, if not of infidelity and vice. 
Now in those changes of conduct or 
manner of life, that sometimes take place 
without regard to religion or the retribu- 
tions of eternity, and merely from motives 
of present interest or reputation, all who 
have attempted such changes from bad 
to good will recollect how much more 
easily they could turn from practices or 
modes of living but recently adopted, 
than from those to which they had been 
long addicted. Take, as an illustration, 
a man grown into years in the indulgence 
of any vicious disposition or passion, — 
avarice, for instance. Ridicule will cure 
this vice in the young miser. He may 
be shamed out of it by the laugh and 
sneer of his fellows. But upon the aged 
miser you may exhaust all means of cure 



FROM A PASTOR. 119 

in vain. You might as well attempt to re- 
store to his gray locks the glossy hues of 
youth, or give smoothness to the brow 
which age has furrowed with wrinkles. 
Talk to him of charity, of public spirit, 
of disinterested beneficence ; then go and 
deliver the same discourse to the dead, 
and your success will be the same with 
the one as the other. This difficulty of 
bringing a man to act against the force of 
established habit is not peculiar to ava- 
rice. It is the same with every vice or 
long indulged obliquity in the character. 
The current of thought and feeling that 
has so long set in one direction, as to 
have become habitual, is well nigh as 
difficult to change, as to cause a stream 
to flow upward towards its source. To 
change a settled habit is represented in 
Scripture as all but impossible. It is to 
change the skin of the Ethiopian, — to 
wash out the spots of the leopard. 

While the young, then, will find suffi- 



120 A PRESENT 

cient difficulty in turning their mind and 
heart to God and serving him in a sober, 
righteous, and godly life in the days of 
their youth, they are to be reminded, that 
while they defer thus to remember their 
Creator the process described above is 
going on, and habits of inconsideration 
and irreligion are growing and strength- 
ening. While in this unguarded state, 
while God is not in all their thoughts, 
they are peculiarly and fearfully exposed 
to fall into the vices incident to the 
early stages of life, illicit pleasure, levity 
of thought and speech, intemperate indul- 
gence of the appetites, and a nameless 
train of fashionable follies and excesses, 
comprehended under the current phrase 
of youthful dissipation. It is by gradual 
and imperceptible progress that all, or 
any of these vices acquire the dominion 
of habit over their victims. 

The young who have been led captive 
by any of these vices feel, we will sup- 



FROM A PASTOR. 121 

pose, some uneasiness about their condi- 
tion to-day, and think with themselves 
that very soon they will turn about and 
begin a new course, — will obey the voice 
of conscience, the voice of divine wisdom 
and give to God and the claims of religion 
that place in their thoughts and affections, 
which they ought to hold there in prefer- 
ence to every other concern. Soothed 
and satisfied for the present with this 
purpose and with getting rid of the pain 
and self-denial of an immediate radical 
change, and feeling secure of the future, 
they go on putting off farther and farther 
the period of reformation until it becomes 
finally a habit of the mind to think of 
religion only as a thing to be attended 
to at some future time ; and this habit but 
too often continues till eternity separates 
them from among the living in time, and 
the opportunity for reformation on earth 
is past and at an end with them. 

Since such is obviously the case, — 
11 



122 A PRESENT 

since the train of thoughts and feelings 
and course of life which are adverse to 
religion, and uninfluenced by regard to 
God and the retributions of eternity, are 
gaining strength, and will shortly, if per- 
sisted in, become fixed and permanent, 
like the lines and features, which mark the 
countenance ; and if my young auditors 
ever intend to give their heart to God, 
and to follow the instructions of Jesus, as 
their guide to everlasting happiness, why 
not determine that you will now begin a 
religious life, and cry unto God from this 
time, My Father, thou art the guide of my 
youth ? Why not resolve that you will 
now remember and obey your Creator, 
when the duty will be so much easier, if 
you begin betimes, when the heart is 
most susceptible of the holy and hallow- 
ing influences of God's spirit, — most open 
and yielding to the impressions of relig- 
ious truth, — most easily fashioned to a 
resemblance of Jesus, in his perfect love 



FROM A PASTOR. 123 

to God and man, — when you will have so 
few habits adverse to a religious life to. 
vanquish — when you will have so few 
tears of regret and penitence to shed, and 
these with so much less of bitterness in 
them, — when you will have so much more 
peace and joy of heart in life, and at your 
last hour a confidence in God so much 
more sweet and blessed from having given 
to him the dew of your youth and the 
strength of your mature years ? 

2. For another reason why youth is 
the fittest period for commencing a relig- 
ious life, is the consideration that in 
the spring time of life you have greater 
sensibility ; — your affections are more 
easily moved, — your heart is most ten- 
der ; — you receive more readily and 
deeply the stamp and impress of that 
form of character, to which religion would 
mould her disciples. You offer a mind less 
marred by the cares of the world, less 
hardened by selfishness, by the deceit- 



124 A PRESENT 

fulness of riches and the lust of other 
things, which in maturer minds choke the 
'good seed of the wqrd and repel the influ- 
ences of divine truth. You present a tablet 
unmarked by the dark characters of vice, 
on which religion may find space and room 
to inscribe her sacred lessons in large 
and distinct lines. Not that you are even 
now innocent and without spot. For the 
best instructed, most amiable and ingenu- 
ous youths have many errors and defects to 
correct in their character, — many wrong 
dispositions and tempers, many deviations 
from innocence, and much undutifulness 
towards their earthly parents and their 
Father in heaven to acknowledge and 
lament. But although there are few who 
pass the age of childhood and youth re- 
taining their innocence unsoiled and their 
manners unspotted, yet there are, we 
know, different shades from the pure 
white of innocence to the blackest shades 
of guilt, different degrees of hardness 



FROM A PASTOR. 125 

from the heart of flesh to the heart of 
stone. 

Your violations of conscience, we may 
presume, have yet been comparatively 
few. Selfishness has not yet entwined 
itself about all the fibres of your heart. 
You are yet capable of being moved by 
considerations addressed to your kind and 
generous affections. You would shrink 
from the polluting touch of palpable vice 
in any shape. All this may be, — and 
yet you may not have remembered rever- 
ently and lovingly your Creator ; he may 
not have been in all your thoughts. And 
if in this favorable period, you still forget 
your Maker and exclude religion from 
your thoughts and from your plan of life, 
which all in some form propose to them- 
selves, you will probably plunge into the 
business and pleasures of the world des- 
titute of piety, — grow more and more 
insensible to the claims of your God and 
Saviour upon your love and obedience, 
11* 



126 A PRESENT 

until the most solemn and weighty con- 
siderations, involving the awful alterna- 
tives of awakening to a wretched or 
blessed futurity in the life to come, will 
fail to move the heart which has been 
hardened, or to affect the sensibilities 
which have been benumbed by early and 
long continued habits of irreligion, of 
unbelief and sin. Your affections now 
flow in a warm and generous current. 
Your souls may now if ever be kindled 
to a lofty and enthusiastic love of virtue 
and disinterested devotion to the service 
of God and man. While, therefore, you 
have hearts to be moved and sensibilities 
to be affected by the love of God and your 
Saviour, and to feel the beauty of holi- 
ness, the attractions of piety and the 
rewards of well doing, and sympathies to 
be touched by the wants and wretched- 
ness of suffering humanity, leave the 
frivolous amusements, the trifling and too 
often corrupting pleasures, and idle van- 



FROM A PASTOR. 127 

ities, which lead so many, wide from the 
paths of heavenly wisdom and in the pur- 
suit of which, even while most eagerly 
pursued, 

" The heart distrusting asks if this be joy," — 

leave the pursuit of these delusive phan- 
toms, which mock their pursuers with 
emptiness, and by remembering now 
your Creator in the days of your youth, 
aspire to joys, that are real, that are solid 
and enduring, the peace of God, that good 
part that can never be taken away from 
you. 

3. Again, as a third reason for thus 
remembering your Creator in the period 
of youth, you are assured that the early 
consecration of your powers and your 
time to the service of God and your fel- 
low men by a sober, righteous and godly 
life, is an offering peculiarly acceptable 
to God and your Saviour. God hath 
said for your encouragement, I love 



128 A PRESENT 

them that love me, and they that seek me 
early shall find me. Jesus, when he be- 
held the young man who had kept the 
commandments from his youth, loved him. 
God seems to have intimated in the of- 
ferings, which he required of his ancient 
people, that the first reflections of the 
expanding mind, and the first affections 
of the youthful heart should be devoted 
to him. It was the first opening flowers, 
the first fruits of the year, and the fairest 
firstlings of the flock, which he com- 
manded to be brought to his altar. Yet 
there is hope for the most offending, 
who have wandered longest, and farthest 
from God and their duty, that when 
they return with the disposition and 
determination of the penitent prodigal, 
they shall meet a gracious reception 
from the Father of mercies, who desireth 
not the death of the sinner. But with 
how different a confidence may the young 
man or woman in the freshness of youth, 



FROM A PASTOR. 129 

with affections yet pure, manners un- 
soiled, and a mind uncontaminated by 
any stain or touch of vice, come before 
God and say, " Thou art my father's 
God, and early will I seek thee ; thou 
art my God, and I would love and serve 
thee. In thy favor is life, and thy loving 
kindness is better than life. Be thou the 
guide of my youth. Teach me thy 
ways. Lead me in the way of thy holy 
commandments, which is the pathway of 
life, and in which there is no death. 
Make me and keep me wholly thine for- 
ever.' ' An early and sincere self con- 
secration like this is most acceptable to 
God, like the morning incense of old, 
whose fragrance ascended to heaven. 
There is no such confidence, no such 
reception for the early depraved votary 
of illicit pleasure, for the polluted victim 
of a life of worldliness and sensuality, 
burdened with early infirmities, and pre- 
mature age, dragging his reluctant, feeble 



130 A PRESENT 

steps to God, because he has no longer 
animal appetites, senses, or strength to 
pursue his gains or pleasures ; or to de- 
rive any further enjoyment from the 
world. Such a late and forced return to 
God, taking refuge in religion as a last 
resort, however sincere may be the re- 
pentance of the returning sinner, affords 
at best but a very dark and doubtful 
prospect of happiness in the life to come. 
We may not at present comprehend the 
long and severe discipline which such a 
soul may have to endure, before it can 
be fitted to associate with the pure 
spirits and " sanctities of heaven. " To 
avoid all this let the young devote to 
God the first strength and ardor of their 
affections, the prime and vigor of their 
youth and manhood. 

If there is joy in the presence of the 
angels of God over one sinner that re- 
penteth, it must surely gladden heaven 
and earth to see the young in the midst 



FROM A PASTOR. 131 

of surrounding folly, levity and thought- 
lessness, in despite of every allurement to 
entice and seduce them from their alle- 
giance to God and duty, while the passions 
are strong, and clamorous for indulgence, 
turning from the way of the ungodly, and 
going early in company with the people of 
God, the children of light, the disciples of 
Jesus, in quest of a better country, even an 
heavenly. Piety, religion, is always lovely 
whenever it appears in its genuine form ; 
but it is pre-eminently so, when we be- 
hold it shielding the innocence, forming 
the habits, moulding the temper, chast- 
ening the vivacity, hallowing the at- 
tachments and sanctifying the pleasures 
of youth. What dignity', what stability, 
what peace and joy are ever attendant 
upon the young, who early give their 
heart to God ; who thus remember their 
Creator in the days of their youth, and 
acknowledge him in all their ways ? 
God also will remember the youth, who 



132 A PRESENT 

thus remembers him, through life, in 
death and forever. You may read it in 
his word, "I remember thee, the love of 
thine espousals, the kindness of thy youth. 
Thou shalt find that thou hast not sought 
me in vain. I will shield thee as in the 
hollow of my hand. I will vouchsafe my 
light to guide, and my peace to cheer 
thee. And those that have sought me 
early, and served me long, shall stand 
higher in bliss and in glory, than those 
who sought me late, and then only be- 
cause the world was forsaking them." 

PART II. 

In previous remarks, several consider- 
ations were adduced to show the import- 
ance to the young of early religion, and 
which should be regarded by them, as 
motives and inducements, which their 
Creator holds out to them to be early 
religious. 

I proceed now to propose to the 
young other considerations, as incite- 



FROM A PASTOR. 133 

ments to early piety. A very serious 
one is suggested in the latter clause of 
the text. It counsels you to remember 
your God, and make religion your refuge 
before the evil days come, and the years 
draw nigh, in which thou shalt say, I have 
no pleasure in them. You are all doubt- 
less looking forward to maturity of years, 
and would be shocked were it revealed 
to you that your sun should go down ere 
it was noon. You doubtless hope to 
arrive at that distant goal, when the 
current in your veins shall begin to be 
chilled and retarded by age ; when 
your locks shall be white with the snows 
of time, when business can no longer 
occupy you, and pleasure can no longer 
please, — when the grasshopper shall be a 
burden, and desire shall fail. 

But in this expectation very many of 

you will be disappointed. You can have 

no assurance of long life. You may 

early stumble upon the dark mountains, 

12 



134 A PRESENT 

and fall into an untimely grave. The 
inscriptions, which bereaved affection has 
engraved upon the frail memorials of the 
dead, will teach you that the number of 
those, who die in early life surpasses 
that of those, who attain to maturity of 
years. Not half the human race, it has 
been computed, survive the period of 
youth. To those, who are destined to 
be removed from this world by an early 
death, you will admit, that it is of the 
first importance to be prepared for that 
event ; and that it is essential to such a 
preparation that the destined victim of 
this early death should remember God, 
and devote to him the earliest reflections 
of the opening mind, and the first affec- 
tions of the youthful heart, in the manner 
above described. You would all adopt 
the prayer of the christian lyrist : 

" Leave us, Father, till our spirit 
From each earthly taint is free, 
Fit thy kingdom to inherit, 
Fit to take its rest with thee." 



FROM A PASTOR. 135 

As no one however knows, or can 
know, who are destined to 1 an early re- 
moval hence, it equally behooves all to 
make this preparation. 

But suppose you live to old age. Of all 
the aspects in which we can contemplate a 
human being, that of an aged man, who 
from his youth has walked with God in the 
ways of righteousness, whose hoary head 
is an emblem of that crown of glory 
which awaits him from his righteous 
Judge, who stands ready to take his 
upward flight to that world, where the 
aged renew their youth, and flourish in 
immortal vigor, — this, I say, of all spec- 
tacles, which man presents to his fellow 
men, is the most august and venerable. 
On the other hand, the most melancholy 
and pitiable of all spectacles is an old 
man, who has provided no consolations 
for the desolate period of his age, — an 
old man, who has lived from his youth 
up without religion, without piety, with- 



136 A. PRESENT 

out God in the world, — an old man, 
whose licentious youth was succeeded by 
a manhood of unbelief, a heart hardened 
to adamant, a conscience seared to cal- 
lousness, — an old man, who has through 
life made a mock of sin, — laughed at the 
fears of those who stood in awe of God, 
and a judgment to come, — who has made 
a jest of the christian's piety, and the 
christian's hope, — who has a thousand 
times done despite to the spirit of grace, 
and trodden under foot the blood of the 
everlasting covenant shed to bring him 
near to God, — an old man, who has thus 
to the last been treasuring up wrath 
against the day of wrath, and whose 
only hope is, that he shall shortly die, 
like the beasts that perish, a death of 
utter extinction, but who is not without 
his fears that he may be disappointed in 
this forlorn hope. This is a spectacle, 
at which all who believe in the righteous 
retributions of a future life, must tremble 



FROM A PASTOR. 137 

while they grieve. There is not one of 
my young readers, if not hurried away 
in mid life, whose old age may not 
resemble this sad spectacle, should you 
fail to make religion and the service of 
your God your early choice. 

Although you may find in the pleasures 
and occupations of a life destitute of piety, 
unsanctified by a serious thought of God, 
or any abiding remembrance of your 
accountableness to him; although you 
may find wherewith to cheer your heart 
in the days of your youth, and even in 
your riper years, so long as you have 
health, and desirable connections, and 
your affairs are prosperous, you yet must 
know that all these sources of enjoyment 
are every moment liable to fail you. 
The continuance indeed of all earthly 
happiness, is precarious. The days of 
darkness will overtake you, and the 
years may come soon, and they may be 
many, in which you can find no pleasure 
12* 



138 A. PRESENT 

in what now pleases and satisfies you. 
You will then feel your need of some 
better resource, some more effectual 
support and consolation than this world, 
or the things of it can give you. 

This support, this consolation can be 
secured in no other other way than by 
remembering now your Creator, and 
serving him with a sincere heart and a 
willing mind in the season of youth, 
and health, and joy, that God may then 
remember you, and lift up the light of 
his countenance upon you, when your 
days of evil, and years of trouble and 
sorrow shall have come, as they surely 
will come, soon or late, upon all who 
live to see many years. 

With all the supports, consolations and 
hopes of religion, arising from the re- 
membrance of a life early and long devo- 
ted to the service of God by virtuous and 
patient continuance in well-doing, such is 
the infirmity of our nature, that the aged 



FROM A PASTOR. 139 

are but too prone to sadness and regret 
at being deprived of their vigor, their 
memory and importance in society, and 
to mourn over their impaired senses and 
appetites, the loss of their companions 
and equals in years, and their consequent 
desertion and loneliness in the world. 
Much of their time passes heavily and 
gloomily, even when they have the cheer- 
ing and sustaining hope of soon exchang- 
ing their enfeebled and worn out body 
for one all glorious and immortal, like that 
of their ascended Saviour. Think, then, 
what must be the old age of those, who 
are destitute of the supports and consola- 
tions of religion, who have lived from 
their earliest days in a state of alienation 
and estrangement from God, — who have 
maintained no devout intercourse of 
prayer and communion with the Father of 
their spirits,— who have no settled faith 
in the glad tidings of a life to come, and 
who are conscious of having done nothing 



140 A PRESENT 

to secure a part and a lot in the promised 
inheritance of the righteous in that future 
life. They look back with peevish re- 
gret upon pleasures and occupations, in 
which they can no longer take any part. 
Dissatisfied with the present, they look 
forward to the future without hope, if not 
with fearful apprehensions of a judgment 
to come, which however confidently they 
may have denied or ridiculed, they may 
feel to be so probable and reasonable in 
itself, as to make them, when they think 
of it, tremble as it formerly did a hardened 
and dissolute Felix. Incapable of active 
employment from infirmity, cut off from 
their accustomed intercourse with society, 
having no treasured fund of happiness in 
the recollection of a life well spent in the 
service of God and humanity, no secret 
spring of consolation and joy from re- 
membered communion with God, from 
recollected seasons of refreshment in 
his presence, when their meditations of 



FROM A PASTOR. 141 

him were sweet, — no soothing hopes and 
foretastes of heaven; but all around, 
within and before them dark, gloomy and 
comfortless, — existence in such circum- 
stances must be indeed a wearisome 
burden. 

All or much of this you may and 
probably will experience, if you live to 
old age, except a religious remembrance 
and service of your Creator mark your 
early years, and you thus escape the 
snares and perils, and the corruptions to 
which your youth is exposed, and the 
consequent unbelief and hardness of 
heart to which they naturally lead. Es- 
caping all this by an early consecration of 
your affections and your life to God and 
virtue, your age then, if you are not 
called before to your eternal recompense, 
will be as peaceful and happy, as in the 
other case it must be wretched and des- 
olate. It will be the calm evening of a 
busy, useful, well spent and not unpleas- 



142 A PRESENT 

ing day. And it will be doubly grateful, 
not only as it brings repose from the toils 
and cares and burdens of the day, but as 
an earnest of being speedily called to 
that glorious rest and reward, which 
awaits the righteous for all that they have 
done and suffered in obedience to the will 
of their Divine Master, in whose service 
their day of life has been spent. Having 
this hope, they rejoice when they see the 
night approaching, which summons them 
to the happy rest, which remaineth for 
the people of God. They look by faith 
beyond the curtain that conceals from 
their last bed of mortal repose the light 
of eternity, and they see in vision the 
spires of the immortal city, which hath 
foundations, whose builder and maker is 
God. Their spirits long to mingle with 
the spirits of the just made perfect, and 
with them to dwell with God, " who is 
their home." And adopting each, as they 
depart, the language of God's ancient 



FROM A PASTOR. 143 

servant, they bid adieu to earth saying, 
now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart 
in peace ; for mine eyes have seen thy salva- 
tion. Who would not forego all the 
false joys of a licentious youth, and a 
manhood of irreligion and worldliness, 
and endure cheerfully all the self-denial 
and self-discipline of a youth of piety and 
a manhood of christian godliness and so- 
briety, for such an old age and happy 
death as this ? 

It deeply concerns you, my young 
friends, to bear in mind, that although 
you may not fall into an untimely grave, 
— that even should you live many years 
and rejoice in them all, yet the evil 
days of sickness or infirmity and death 
will come at last. You may indeed 
like many others, who have gone be- 
fore you, be suddenly arrested in the 
spring-time of youth, and health, and 
strength, or in your ardent summer, in 
full pursuit of the world, unwarned and 
unprepared in every sense to go to your 



144 A PRESENT 

great account. The bare possibility of 
this should hasten your determination to 
seek God early, and constrain you to be 
watchful, sober-minded, diligent in culti- 
vating those dispositions and forming 
those habits, which will fit you for an 
early death, should you be early called 
away, for a useful and happy life should 
you live many years, for a blessed im- 
mortality, should your days on earth be 
few or many. All those who forget God 
in their youth almost inevitably, as they 
advance in life, fall into confirmed habits 
of irreligion, and an unspiritual state of 
heart and mind, if not into open moral 
delinquencies ; and consequently when 
they die, quit the world in a state of 
stupid insensibility, or in the remorse 
and anguish of an awakened conscience. 
And beyond all this, if the suggestions of 
reason, the belief of all nations in every 
age, and the express declarations of 
Scripture, be not all illusion and fable, 



FROM A PASTOR. 145 

there is another life, a judgment to come, 
the awards of which will be bliss to the 
righteous and wo to the wicked. How- 
ever forgetful of God and regardless of 
his laws you may be, — however engrossed 
by present objects of interest, — satisfied 
as you may be with walking in the ways 
of your own heart and in the sight of 
your own eyes ; however unmindful of this 
solemn issue of our earthly probation, 
certain it is, such a righteous discrimina- 
tion and award of character and conduct, 
awaits us when we die. For, says the 
apostle, we must all appear before the judg- 
ment seat of Christ ; that every one may re- 
ceive the things done in his body, according 
to that he hath done, whether it be good or 
bad. And in the chapter containing the 
text, it is written, God will bring every 
work into judgment, with every secret things 
whether it be good, or whether it be evil. 
The sincerely upright and truly penitent 
only will receive acquittal and approba- 
13 



146 A PRESENT 

tion from their Judge. The entire char- 
acter, the outward acts and secrets of all 
hearts must undergo the scrutiny from 
which there can be no escape or conceal- 
ment. All sinful purposes, words and 
actions, of which the agent has not truly 
repented, — whatever has been profane, 
corrupting or injurious to yourself, or 
others in your language, — whatever has 
been wrathful, cruel or revengeful in 
your temper, — whatever has been false, 
deceitful, or fraudulent in your intercourse 
and transactions with others, will all 
appear uncancelled against you, except 
you shall have repented, reformed and 
corrected these vices and obliquities be- 
fore being called to your final account. 
For this, and for adorning your character 
with the virtues opposed to these vices 
and obliquities, your life is prolonged 
from day to day. Let me therefore urge 
the young, whom I address, by the beau- 
ty, security and happiness of early piety. 



FROM A PASTOR. 147 

— by the hopes of your parents and of 
society, — by all your regard and secret 
promptings of conscience to what is true, 
honorable, pure, lovely and of good re- 
port, — by your instinctive yearnings for 
a perfect and enduring happiness, — by 
your fondly cherished hopes of success in 
life, of length of days and a peaceful old 
age, — by your exposure to an early 
death, — by the solemn retributions of 
eternity, which shall follow, — by the 
worth of your precious and immortal 
souls, too precious to be redeemed by 
corruptible things, such as silver or 
gold, and which a Saviour bled and died 
to save from sin and wo, — by all these 
solemn and momentous considerations 
I would implore, I would adjure you to 
seek God early, — to remember now your 
Creator in the days of your youth, and to 
devote to his service the morning of your 
life, the dew of your youth, the freshness 
and fragrance of your young affections, 



148 A PRESENT 

your yet innocent and untainted aspira- 
tions and wishes. So shall you be early 
blessed, and as has ever been the experi- 
ence of the righteous, early satisfied from 
yourselves. Not the least among the 
happy fruits of thus remembering your 
Creator in youth will be, that it will ren- 
der you amiable in yourselves, not with 
that amiableness which passes in the 
world under this name, an outside ap- 
pearance of loveliness and good nature, 
but an intrinsic loveliness of character 
resulting from benevolent and pure af- 
fections, a deep-felt sense of duty, a vir- 
tuous and honest mind, aiming to please 
God by fulfilling the law of love, which 
wisheth and worketh good and not evil 
to its neighbor. Your deportment will 
have a fairness, a frankness, which neith- 
er needs nor desires concealment or 
disguise, — a dignity which even the vi- 
cious and profligate will respect. 

You will have, moreover, within you 



FROM A PASTOR. 149 

the basis, on which to build the hope 
of durable affection, peace, order and 
domestic happiness in a wedded life. 
To this you all early look forward. This 
is among the first and happiest dreams 
of youth. This is the state for which the 
God of nature designed you, and in which 
he has ordained that, if you follow his 
counsels in forming this most interesting 
and important connection, you shall find 
your highest and best earthly joys. But 
believe me, for I speak advisedly when I 
assure you, that the happiness, which 
is expected from a blind, a hasty, and 
irreligious union between an irreligious 
husband and wife, will prove delusive and 
vain. Let the light and thoughtless pair, 
the unbelieving husband and frivolous 
wife promise themselves what they may 
from that youthful ferment of the passions, 
which is sometimes dignified with the 
name of love, unless there be a feeling of 
dependence upon the Divine blessing for 
13* 



150 A PRESENT 

happiness in this connection, — unless 
there be religion in your heart and in 
your house, — unless your union and af- 
fection, your cares and joys be sanctified 
by piety, your love will soon become 
extinct for want of those virtues and dis- 
positions, which alone can sustain and 
keep the flame alive. Causes for dissat- 
isfaction and contention will arise. You 
will have for each other none of those 
pure and sacred regards, — none of those 
mutual sweet confidences, and that hal- 
lowed "communion high and dear" of 
mind with mind and heart with heart, 
which grow out of mutual concern for each 
other's virtue, spiritual life and peace, 
and the cherished hope, that in death and 
after death you shall not be divided, — 
that you shall be united spirits in the 
eternal home of perfect love and fullness 
of joy, of celestial purity and blessedness. 
Unless your union is consecrated by sen- 
timents of piety, by religious sympathy, 



FROM A PASTOR. 151 

by spiritual affections, it will be merely 
a union of the senses and not of souls, 
a union of animated clay, as crumbling 
and perishable as the materials out of 
which it is formed. And a principal 
reason why this connection is so often 
unhappy, is plainly this, that but a small 
portion of the wedded are influenced in 
forming this connection by religious prin- 
ciple, — or if one of the parties is religious 
the other is not. 

There is a cordial sincerity, an endeared 
confidence, tenderness and purity in the 
union of those fortunate pairs, who are 
both religious and of like precious faith, 
which unites them by indissoluble bonds 
to each other, and by their religious 
sympathies to their God and Saviour, to 
all the good on earth and all the blessed 
in heaven. It is a union which has re- 
spect to something beyond death and the 
grave ; and there is in such a union a 
spirituality, an exalted tone of affection, 



152 A PRESENT 

which sensual and worldly hearts can 
never know, — of which the irreligious 
and licentious cannot even dream. 

As, therefore, you are looking forward 
to the happiness of wedded life, cultivate 
a spirit of piety, be early religious, or 
your hopes of happiness from that source 
will be ultimately blasted. Choose your 
companion from among those, who like 
yourself, remember their Creator in the days 
of their youth. Thus connected, if, as 
you advance towards the goal of age, 
religion, integrity of soul and pureness of 
living mark your course, when you look 
back, and see the sum of your years 
gone by greatly to exceed the number of 
those that you can with reason expect are 
to come, it will excite neither regret nor 
gloom, neither complaint nor fear. You 
will behold yourselves so much nearer to 
your final and happy home in your Fath- 
er's house. You will see, without an 
emotion, hoary hairs collecting upon your 



FROM A PASTOR. 153 

temples, time plowing its furrows upon 
your brow, and you will feel without repin- 
ing or sadness, the frost of age chilling 
your blood, and stiffening your frame. 
You can say with humble confidence, 
He, ivho of old time was my father's God, 
and who has been my God and the guide of 
my youth — will not cast me off when I am 
old and gray headed. You will have lived 
beloved and honored ; for you will have 
lived not only an inoffensive and blame- 
less, but a useful life ; you will enjoy a 
soothing consciousness, a heart-cheering 
remembrance that you have not lived in 
vain, — that you have accomplished the 
true ends of existence here in a spiritual 
preparation for a better existence to 
come. And whether you are called to 
depart in the meridian, or evening of 
life, yours will be the peaceful end of the 
righteous. You shall go away to join the 
community of the blessed in God's heav- 
enly presence, and be received among 



154 A PRESENT FROM A PASTOR. 

those, whose vesture shines with a bright- 
ness far surpassing that of those late re- 
turning penitents, who have been but 
imperfectly cleansed from the defilements 
and sins of many years. 

God grant, my young auditors, that 
the considerations, the motives and pros- 
pects that have been set before you this 
day, may produce in you that early 
seriousness and piety, which shall give 
you peace and joy of heart in life, hope 
in death, and blessedness forever more in 
the life to come. 



155 



DISCOURSE V. 

A MARK SET UPON THREE VICES FOR THE REPROBATION 
AND AVOIDANCE OF THE YOUNG. 

Prov. VIII, 32. — Now, therefore, hearken 
unto me, ye children, for blessed are they 
that keep my ways. 

SolomOn, the reputed author, but 
probably only the compiler of the princi- 
pal contents of this book of Proverbs, 
has, in several of the first chapters, 
including that containing the text, di- 
rected his attention especially to the 
young. His manner of addressing them 
is most earnest, affectionate and paternal. 
Having felt how much his own innocence 
and purity had been marred by the se- 
ductions and snares, that lurk in " the 
slippery paths of youth/' — having gone 
the round of those pleasures, and wan- 



156 A PRESENT 

dered through all those devious ways of 
illicit indulgence, by which the young 
are so often early lost to virtue, to use- 
fulness, to true enjoyment and peace, — 
having with a philosophic mind, purpose- 
ly to ascertain where true and lasting 
happiness is to be found, sought this 
fleeting image of the imagination in the 
festive banquet, in the wine that sparkled 
and gave its color aright in the cup, — 
in the sound of the viol and the harp, in 
the voice of singing men and singing 
women, in the harlot smiles of beauty, — 
in the unstinted gratification of vagrant 
desire, — in the possession of a throne and 
sovereign power, of unbounded affluence 
and grandeur, — his admonitions and coun- 
sels may be regarded as those of a man, 
who has experienced what he describes, 
and who knows the dangers and has 
smarted from the vices, against which he 
warns and would secure the young. — 
After having ranged thus freely in search 



FROM A PASTOR. 157 

of happiness, through all the diversified 
regions of false delights, as well as the 
innocent and pure, as a parent wisely and 
tenderly affectioned towards his children, 
he counsels the young to beware of the 
dangers of illicit pleasure, to be on their 
guard against the seductions and en- 
chantments of vice under the specious 
name of youthful hilarity, and partaking in 
the gratifications suited to the spring-time 
of life. He assures them that the fear of 
the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and 
that to depart from evil, to avoid sin in 
every form, is the surest evidence of true 
understanding. He urges home the 
eternal truth, that they, who heed not 
the precepts of the wisdom from above, 
wrong their own souls, and that they who 
give the reins to sensual desire and are 
led captive by the allurements and grati- 
fications of appetite and passion, are in 
love with death. 

He vividly and graphically delineates 
14- 



158 A PRESENT 

the enticements and issues of these illicit 
gratifications, in other words, of sinful 
pleasure, under the image of a female 
of captivating charms and abandoned 
character, calling to the young as they 
pass along the highway of life, to come 
into her abode. "I beheld," says he, 
" at the window of my house, I looked 
through the casement, and lo, among the 
simple ones, I discerned a young man 
void of understanding, passing through 
the street near her corner, and he went 
the way to her house. In the twilight, 
in the evening, in the black and dark 
night, she comes forth to meet him ; with 
the honied accents of flattery, with the 
mimic gestures of fond affection, with the 
artful eloquence of a practised enchant- 
ress she descants upon the preparations 
she has made in her dwelling for his re- 
ception, upon the joys she has in store 
for him. With her much fair speech she 
causeth him to yield, with the flattery of 



FROM A PASTOR. 159 

her lips she forceth him. He goeth after 
her straightway, as an ox goeth to the 
slaughter, or as a fool to the correction 
of the stocks, as a bird hasteth to the 
snare, and knoweth not that it is for his 
life. As soon as the deceitful and cruel 
sorceress has despoiled him of his inno- 
cence, his peace and his substance, she 
casts him forth wounded, and not seldom 
slays even the strongest that go after her." 
The simple think indeed that as they 
break from the restraints of religion, 
from that Divine law which lays its stern 
interdict upon the illicit indulgence of 
those fleshly lusts, which war against the 
soul, and follow in the train of 

" This ruling goddess with the zoneless waist," 

they are in the high road to happiness. 
Her deluded victims, in the mean time, 
know not that her habitation, so garnished 
with flowers and decked with fine linen 
of Egypt, and so perfumed with myrrh 



160 A PRESENT 

and aloes and cinnamon, is nevertheless 
the pathway to shame, to sorrow and woe; 
— that the dead are there, and that every 
outlet from her house leads down to the 
chambers of death. 

Happy it were for the young, if the 
instruction conveyed under this ancient 
allegory, this oriental personification of 
illicit pleasure, could effectually deter 
them from going in the way of this 
charmer, whose enticements have se- 
duced so many from the path of purity, 
of early piety and sobriety of mind, to 
that which conducts to early depravity, 
dishonor and ruin in this life, and certain 
misery in the life to come. Notwith- 
standing however the faithful admonitions 
and instructions of the wise, and the 
warning voice of her numberless, wretch- 
ed and repentant victims in every age, 
the* allurements of this enchantress still 
lead captive her thousands and ten thou- 
sands of either sex. 



FROM A PASTOR. 161 

The young and inexperienced, full of 
hope and easily deceived, but too seldom 
listen to the friendly cautions of the wise, 
and the warnings of the self-destroyed, 
and are slow to profit from any other 
than the dear-bought lessons of experi- 
ence. 

Those, who have gone before them in 
the perilous journey of life, anxiously look 
back to the young adventurers and point 
out to them the dangers of the way. 
They still persuade themselves that there 
is in those, who admonish them, some 
error, some mistake, some false estimate 
of things, from disappointment, miscalcu- 
lation or mischance, which they flatter 
themselves they shall be so prudent or 
so fortunate, as to avoid. They press 
forward in the same paths, heedless of 
the beacon lights which their predeces- 
sors have left to show them the dangers 
of the way, until they find in the end, 
that they who hate instruction and are 
14* 



162 A PRESENT 

deaf to the warnings of divine wisdom 
emphatically love death. 

Some, however, in every age, in every 
community, are disposed to hearken and 
obey, and are thus saved from the cor- 
rupting and blighting effects of early in- 
flamed because early indulged propensities 
and inclinations, which the Creator has 
given us, not to be our masters, but to be 
kept in subjection to the laws of mental 
purity, modesty, religious sobriety and 
virtuous self-control. 

The young are easily made to compre- 
hend these laws and their hearts to feel 
and appreciate the happiness of obedience 
to their authority. Their minds are yet 
open to impressions of the true, the good 
and the beautiful. They are susceptible, 
if ever, of all the kindly and hallowing 
influences, which the instructions of di- 
vine wisdom, and the disinterested coun- 
sels and admonitions of the good and 
enlightened can impart. 



FROM A PASTOR. 163 

Vanity has not yet made them too wise 
in their own conceit, to learn of those, 
who are able to teach, nor pride of opin- 
ion closed every avenue of their minds 
against the entrance of new and purer 
light than they had previously received. 
Worldliness, ambition, greediness of gain 
has not yet turned all the tender, gener- 
ous and benevolent sensibilities of the 
soul to ice and adamant. The moroseness 
of age, the disappointments of life have 
not chilled the ardor of hope, the desire 
of improvement and the love of virtue. 
They have not yet, by long neglect, or 
contempt of religion, and of communion 
with God by meditation and prayer, — by 
transgressing often and still deferring 
repentance, come to the desperate deter- 
mination to put off repentance and discard 
religion altogether. 

Good principles, sentiments of piety 
and whatsoever things are true, honest, 
pure, lovely and of good report may be 



164 A PRESENT 

instilled into their young and impressible 
minds and cherished there by the ordinary 
means of forming the human character. 
It is therefore of the first importance that 
parents, instructors and pastors co-operate 
with the young, and lend their aid in the 
accomplishment of this most necessary 
work. For the character of the commu- 
nity, which they will by and by consti- 
tute, will be just such as the young are 
made by education and self discipline. 
Whether we regard the young therefore, 
as yet unstained by vice, and as now in 
the critical process of forming their minds 
and morals to act a part of usefulness and 
dignity in society, or as hastening to the 
retributions of eternity to receive accord- 
ing to their deeds and improvement in 
this life, — regarded in either or any view, 
that their minds be early imbued with 
sentiments of piety and the love of virtue, 
— that they be early taught and accus- 
tomed to control their passions and appe- 



FROM A PASTOR. 165 

tites, to preserve inviolate the purity, 
modesty and sobriety, as natural as they 
are becoming to ingenuous and uncor- 
rupted youth, must be a matter of the 
deepest interest and utmost moment to 
themselves and to the community. Now 
therefore, hearken unto me, says the divine 
wisdom ; for happy are they who keep my 
ways. They are not only happy in them- 
selves, but contributors to the happiness 
of all around them. For the ways of 
wisdom are ways of pleasantness and all her 
paths are peace. Forsake her not, and she 
shall preserve thee ; love her, and she shall 
keep thee. 

Illicit pleasure, profanity, and intem- 
perance are vices, to which the young, 
especially those who go early abroad, are 
peculiarly exposed, and upon which I 
propose in the sequel to fix a mark for 
your avoidance and reprobation. 

I. Flee, said the apostle to his young 
disciple, youthful lusts. Keep the door 



166 A PRESENT 

of the young heart resolutely shut against 
their entrance. Repel the first intruding 
thought, repress the first rise and stir of 
impure desire in the mind. If the foun- 
tain be defiled, the streams that issue 
from it will no longer be pure. The 
wanderings of the imagination must be 
restrained with a rigid hand. You must 
be able to say with effect to the importu- 
nate suggestions of this internal tempter, 
peace, be still, or you will not long retain 
your innocence. The saying is as just as 
it is trite, that all the instincts, propen- 
sities and passions, which belong to our 
nature, are, like the mighty element of 
fire, when under due control, useful ser- 
vants, answering the important purposes 
for which they were given, — administer- 
ing warmth and imparting activity to our 
being. But set them loose from restraint, 
allow them scope, and they become ter- 
rible masters, — reckless tyrants, that 



FROM A PASTOR. 167 

hurry their blind and passive slaves into 
the commission of every species of crime 
and wickedness. There is no propensity 
implanted in our frame stronger perhaps 
than the one in question, consequently 
none so mysteriously restrained and held 
in check by the innate modesty and tim- 
idity of nature. Yet, if these natural 
guards and checks are once broken 
through and prostrated, and the loss of 
innocence is once incurred by illicit in- 
dulgence, there is no vice more pregnant 
with a host of uncounted penalties and 
woes to its victims, which will so surely 
and darkly overcast all their fair pros- 
pects in life, and may not improbably 
cause their sun to go down at noon. For 
it has been remarked of the criminal 
indulgence of this propensity, that it is 
usually the precursor of a train of other 
vices, and that this sin, debasing as it is, 
will soon be the least of which the habit- 



168 A PRESENT 

ually impure will find themselves guilty.* 
The young, who are yet innocent, but 
who are encompassed with perils in the 
evil communications to which they are 
exposed, cannot be too earnestly en- 
treated, too solemnly adjured, by all that 
is most precious to them, by their dearest 
hopes, their fair fame, their health and 
peace, by all the hallowed joys and sweet 
confidences of virtuous affection, by all 
their wishes for respectability and use- 
fulness in life, for a happy death and an 
eternity of bliss in heaven, to avoid the 
first sin. Let it be ever borne in mind, 
that yielding once to the suggestions of 
illicit desire is to commence a career of 
guilt, to which imagination can fix no 
limits. You have seen a mighty river 
struggling against the barriers that have 



*"If we examine the causes which bring criminals be- 
fore the tribunals of justice, we shall be surprised to find how 
large is the number, whom libertinism has led to crime in a more 
or less direct manner." — Degerando on Self-Education. 



"FROM A PASTOR. 169 

been raised to restrain its course, and to 
direct its waters through channels where 
they may be made subservient to the will 
and use of man. While it can find no 
broken or weak place in these barriers, 
all is safe. But the moment any part 
gives way and the stream begins to find 
a passage through the rupture, it is in- 
stantly enlarged, and the foundation is 
soon undermined. Every moment the 
breach grows wider and the stream more 
impetuous. At length it sweeps away 
every obstacle and rushes along with un- 
restrained fury and ruin. 

The thoughts of many a timid and yet 
virtuous youth have been these. "I may 
indulge for once, — for once trespass upon 
forbidden ground, and then return, re- 
pent, and sin no more." Such is the 
delusive reasoning, with which all un- 
practiced transgressors probably deceive 
themselves ; for there are few that would 
not tremble at the idea of setting out 
15 



170 A PRESENT 

upon a course of meditated and deliberate 
guilt. But once admit and act upon this 
dangerous principle, and your moral ruin 
is certain. Your purpose is to sin for 
once only and then to repent. You in- 
dulge. Conscience is tender and timid, 
and easily alarmed, and always speaks 
loudest previous to the first sin. You 
much more easily make up your deter- 
mination to sin a second time and then to 
desist and repent. But conscience in the 
meantime grows fainter in its admoni- 
tions, or rather you cease to listen, and 
your desires by indulgence grown more 
importunate, headstrong and impetuous, 
hurry you away and plunge you continu- 
ally deeper in pollution and guilt. The 
moral sense is blunted, its perceptions 
obscured, conscience is seared or put to 
sleep. This is what is meant by God's 
taking from the sinner his holy spirit, and 
saying of him, as of old, " Ephraim is 
joined to idols, let him alone." A kind ot 



FROM A PASTOR. 171 

spiritual slumber or moral lethargy steals 
upon the soul ; and, instead of remem- 
bering and putting in practice the re- 
pentance purposed in the beginning, the 
mature offender, hackneyed in the ways 
and conformed to the loose views of com- 
panions like himself, goes about to find 
arguments to justify himself, to refute a 
divine revelation, to discredit a religion, 
which threatens every vice, every unre- 
pented sin with a righteous penalty, with 
inevitable and terrible correction, till it 
reform the depraved subject, in the life 
to come. He will go to books or men, 
who tell him that all future retribution, 
and perhaps even a future existence, is a 
dream ; or, if there be any thing beyond 
the grave, that the wicked and the good, 
the impure and the holy will fare alike. 
It is thus that an early initiation into vice 
becomes the parent of infidelity. It is 
thus that a corrupted youth is usually 
given over in manhood to a reprobate 



172 A PRESENT 

mind. And the hardness of heart and 
insensibility of conscience, and that in- 
difference or contempt for religion, all 
which naturally follow in the train of early 
vice, are but the dreadful earnest, the 
fearful harbingers of future condemnation 
and woe. 

Once more, then, let me urge upon the 
young of my charge, the admonition of 
the apostle, flee youthful lasts. Resist the 
first suggestions of illicit desire. Let 
not the thought of this vice dwell a mo- 
ment in your mind. If it enter unbidden 
reject it with abhorrence. Remember 
that your body was created to be the 
temple of a holy and spotless spirit, — 
that you are enjoined to keep it pure and 
dedicate it a living and unpolluted sacri- 
fice to God. And let the conviction be 
engraven in sun-bright capitals upon the 
tablets of your memory, that so sure as 
there is a God of purity and holiness, who 
is the friend and guardian of the pure and 



FROM A PASTOR. 173 

holy, so sure and inevitable is the pen- 
alty, which he has decreed, shall follow 
in the track of illicit indulgence, of early 
libertinism ; and that its consequences, 
loss of peace and self-respect, shame, 
fear, remorse, — not the gracious relent- 
ings of penitential sorrow, but the sharp, 
relentless goadings of conscious guilt, — 
these and other nameless effects most 
certainly will and always do a thousand 
times overbalance the transient pleasures 
of the licentious and dissolute. Loss of 
reputation and health usually accompa- 
nies the loss of innocence. Jealousy, 
suspicion, a feeling of degradation, con- 
sciousness of deserved neglect from the 
pure and innocent, envy of the virtuous 
and happy, fill the tainted mind with 
disorder and gloom and torment. When 
once the self-respect, the dignity and 
peace of innocence are lost, those guar- 
dian angels of virtue, a proper sense of 
reputation and desire of respectability, 
15* 



174 A PRESENT 

for the most part, leave the votaries of 
licentious pleasures to work all iniquity 
with greediness. In the expressive lan- 
guage of Scripture, they devise mischief 
upon their beds. A polluted imagination 
retains and cherishes the images and 
shadows of their guilty delights, as a 
sort of mental idols, to which they can 
turn when alone and worship in secret. 
Not only so, but as a consequence of 
these illicit and impure enjoyments, all 
relish and desire are lost for those which 
are innocent and pure ; just as eating 
poisonous food will vitiate and spoil the 
natural appetite for that which is salutary 
and nutritious. 

Happy they who have known and who 
seek no other than those healthful and 
chaste delights which God and religion 
authorize, and encourage. The requisi- 
tions of religion, the laws of God, are in 
no instance at war with the true happi- 
ness of his children. There is not, within 



FROM A PASTOR. 175 

the entire compass of human enjoyments 
one that can be named, which will upon 
the whole yield more pleasure than pain, 
of which we are not permitted to par- 
take. But the pleasures, prohibited 
alike by religion and reason, are not 
pleasures in reality ; they are only so re- 
garded by a deceived imagination, and a 
depraved taste. In their consequences 
they sting like the adder, and bite like 
the serpent. God hath said, thus far, i. e. 
to the boundary of innocent and temper- 
ate enjoyment, you may go and no farther. 
The moment you overstep the prescribed 
limits, you will find afterwards little true 
satisfaction in what is on the innocent 
and still less in what is on the guilty 
side. Make not therefore the perilous 
experiment. Keep innocency ; and cher- 
ish, as your most sacred treasure, a pure 
mind, enshrined in a pure body, ever 
guarded by decorous and unspotted man- 
ners. Thus will you preserve unmarred 



176 A PRESENT 

your capacity and relish for those chaste 
and hallowed joys of a virtuous union, 
which God has ordained, as the divinest 
charm and sweetest solace of our earthly 
existence. 

II. Let me next caution the young of 
my charge against profanity, or the irrev- 
erent use of the name of God, and the 
utterance of unmeaning oaths and impre- 
cations. I would in few words hold up 
this vice, this sin to your disgust and ab- 
horrence, under two views : 

1. Are you ambitious of the distinc- 
tion, and of meriting the character of 
well bred ? And would you avoid the 
imputation of vulgar and clownish man- 
ners ? Profanity is a sure mark of ill 
breeding, of a low and clownish origin, 
— of companionship with the rude and 
unmannered. No youth, who aspires to 
be classed with the well bred, and to be 
received into respectable society, will 
utter the language of profanity. It im- 



FROM A PASTOR. 177 

mediately fixes upon him the stamp of 
vulgarity. For where is the vice learn- 
ed ? Only among the rude, the low, the 
unmannered. And to hear from the 
young, in the innocent bloom and beauty 
of the spring time of life, from whom we 
expect the language of simplicity and 
modesty, and the amiable and artless 
manners of uncorrupted nature, — to hear 
them mouthing the vulgar imprecations 
and profane oaths, which they have 
caught from the mouth of some intemper- 
ate, lost and pitiable remnant of human- 
ity, excites at once our grief and horror. 
Some plead in excuse of this practice, 
that they are angry, and that the lan- 
guage of profanity serves to give vent 
and relief to their passion. But it is 
certainly as easy to give vent to your 
rage in one form of words, as another. 
Why not adopt some inoffensive form of 
words, and when angry resound them 
with the same emphasis and fury, as you 



178 A PRESENT 

would the impious oath, and thus, if you 
must, evaporate your passion ? But per- 
haps some are weak enough to think it a 
mark of manliness and spirit. The truly 
brave and intrepid, men of real greatness 
of mind, never swear profanely. It has 
been said of him, " who was first in war, 
first in peace, and first in the hearts of 
his countrymen," that in all the vicissi- 
tudes of a seven years' conflict ; in all his 
embarrassments and vexations, an oath 
was never heard to escape his lips. In- 
deed the most cowardly poltroon in 
existence, nay, the poor idiot, I may add 
the ill-taught parrot, can frame his ac- 
cents and voice to the utterance of the 
profane oath and of the whole vulgar vo- 
cabulary of impiety, with as distinct an 
emphasis, and with about as much ra- 
tionality, as the most accomplished adept 
in this infamous and degrading dialect. 

2. But I feel bound to present this 
vice to you under another and still 



PROM A PASTOR. 179 

darker and more culpable aspect. The 
name of God, the solemn forms of ju- 
dicial oaths, and the language in which 
the future sanctions of religion are ex- 
pressed, should never be uttered but 
with seriousness and reverent awe. God 
has said that he will not hold him guiltless 
that taketh his name in vain. And profane 
lips, it is written, are an abomination in 
his sight. The sin of profane swearing 
has the air of offering a direct affront to 
the Almighty ; and for which there is 
not even the ordinary apology of tempta- 
tion, since it gratifies no appetite, nor 
can procure a man either profit or honor, 
but involves the soul in guilt, without 
the poor equivalent of present interest or 
enjoyment. Let me therefore entreat 
the young of my charge never to sully 
their lips with the language of profanity. 
Avoid the impiety of a practice, — which 
I am happy to believe is falling of late 
years more and more into disuse, — a 



180 A PRESENT 

practice, which is at the same time a 
violation of good manners, and of a posi- 
tive command of God. 

3. Upon the vice of intemperance I 
have not time to enlarge. Nor is it 
needful, since the auspicious revolution 
that has taken place, well nigh through- 
out the entire christian world, has 
brought into discredit, and bids fair to 
banish universally the use of intoxicating 
liquors, as a common beverage. I can 
only say to you, — and this should be 
sufficient to make you stand in awe, and 
ever on your guard, that you fall not 
into this sin, — that the way of the ine- 
briate is the most direct and certain and 
rapidly descending road to ruin, from 
which in former years a pathway was 
rarely found, in which to return. It is 
not long since we beheld this broad high- 
way of the daily use of alcoholic stimu- 
lants thickly marked with the footprints 
of uncounted thousands, descending into 



FROM A PASTOR. 181 

the drunkard's dark valley of degrada- 
tion, wretchedness and death ; but among 
all these thousands only here and there 
and at distant intervals, now and then a 
single solitary footstep of one that re- 
turned. Of late the spectacle has indeed 
been reversed, and we have seen men 
returning in crowds from the drunkard's 
dark valley, and thousands of reformed 
inebriates are now traversing our own 
and other countries, the apostles and 
most successful preachers of total absti- 
nence from intoxicating liquors. It is 
the most extraordinary and cheering 
among the many novel and encouraging 
aspects of the age. If it be not a mani- 
fest miracle, yet who is not ready to 
exclaim, the hand of the Lord hath wrought 
this ; it is the Lord's doing, and it is mar- 
velous in our eyes ? 

But let the young still beware ; this 
contagious and once so generally fatal 
disease, — for it is a disease no less than 
16 



182 A PRESENT 

a vice, — is often insensibly contracted in 
early life ; and long before the subject 
exhibits any decisive symptoms of the 
malady, that is consuming him. When 
the young mingle often in the circle of 
gayety and festivity, — when the heart 
beats high and warm with convivial free- 
dom and merriment, — when God is not 
in all their thoughts, — when the wine 
sparkles in the cup, and example, and 
excited thirst urge them to taste, they 
are often led to drink deep and to tarry 
late at the banquet, and to commit ex- 
cesses, which by frequent repetition 
create an unnatural craving, which at 
length bows them down in ignoble bond- 
age to a depraved appetite for strong 
drink. They sink lower and lower in 
the abyss into which they have fallen. 
They no longer have the strength or 
will to emerge ; — they no longer raise an 
eye, or offer a prayer to heaven for help. 
They abandon all the aims and hopes of 



FROM A PASTOR. 183 

a reasonable being. They lose all per- 
ception and memory of the ends, for 
which they were made. They are con- 
tent to be lost ; to become as the beasts 
that perish ; and have no wish to be any 
thing more or better. A premature 
death closes their history for this world, 
or they live the shame, the grief and 
misery of the families, to which they 
respectively belong. Let this brief sketch 
which tells a tale of woe, mournfully 
verified in the experience of innumerable 
victims of intemperance, serve as a bea- 
con of effectual warning to each of my 
young auditors, that they neither touch, 
nor taste, nor handle that, which has 
proved the bane of so many thousands, 
once deemed as secure and full of hope 
and promise as themselves. 

I have thus briefly adverted to the 
character and effects of three several but 
kindred vices, to which the young are 
peculiarly exposed, while passion is 



184 A PRESENT 

strong and reason not yet matured. 
Aware of your danger, repeat to your- 
selves incessantly these three admoni- 
tions, Flee youthful lusts, — Swear not at 
all, — Avoid intemperance, that downward 
and rapid road to infamy and woe, 
whence formerly but few returned, and 
even these few, as it were, by miracle. 

To be religious, to keep, as the text 
enjoins, the ways of wisdom, you must 
deny yourselves all forbidden pleasures, — 
forbidden because hurtful to the soul; 
but then you may enjoy, and with a 
liigher relish, all that are innocent, and 
these will last. God is the kindest of 
masters, the best of fathers. He means 
you well, in all that he commands or for- 
bids. If you begin early to serve him 
with a perfect heart, and a willing mind, 
you shall soon find his service more than 
freedom. Sweet are the labors of duty, 
and obedience is pleasant to those, who 
love the Master, whom they serve. 



FROM A PASTOR. 185 

Seek God early, and you shall find him. 
You shall not only grow in favor with 
him, but with men. When your fathers 
are gone, you will come forward pre- 
pared to fill their stations with dignity. 
Or, if He, in whose hands is your breath, 
should see fit to remove you hence by an 
early death, your undying spirit, un- 
stained by vice, w T ill return to Him, who 
gave it, like the offering, which he re- 
quired of his ancient people, a firstling 
of the flock, without spot or blemish, 
acceptable and well-pleasing in his sight. 
That you may be finally thus accepted of 
him, may he grant for his infinite mercy's 
sake. Amen. 



16* 



186 A PRESENT 

EXTRACT. 

" The prejudices of the world accord 
an excessive indulgence to libertinism. 
***** These prejudices are as 
fatal as they are blind, and it should be 
the first care of a sound morality to de- 
stroy them. Libertinism, in its external 
effects, profanes the most sacred institu- 
tion of nature and society, violating, 
usurping, or destroying the family affec- 
tions. It draws after it a multitude of 
failures in the duties of fidelity, delicacy, 
and good faith ; conducting, often insen- 
sibly, sometimes suddenly, to the heavi- 
est crimes. At the same time, by a 
secret re-action, it carries a taint to the 
faculties of the soul, impairing dignity of 
character, enfeebling the power of medi- 
tation, by rendering self-recollection 
more difficult, introducing into ideas and 
sentiments a sort of licentiousness and 
misrule, which hurts the energy of rea- 
son as much as that of will, despoiling 



FROM A PASTOR. 187 

the images of excellence of a portion of 
their charms ; while by the effects of the 
habits it draws after it, the soul is envel- 
oped in clouds, and the radiant light and 
pure notions of virtue are enfeebled. " 
[Degerando on Self- Education, p. 414. 
American trans. 



188 



DISCOURSE VI. 

THE YOUNG CAUTIONED AGAINST THE SEDUCTIONS OF 
ILLICIT PLEASURE AND SKEPTICISM IN RELIGION. 

Ecclesiastes XI, 9. — Rejoice, young 
man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer 
thee in the days of thy youth, and ivalk in 
the ways of thine own heart, and in the sight 
of thine own eyes. But know thou, that for 
all these things God will bring thee into 
judgment. 

In the first part of this address we 
have a specimen of the grave and solemn 
irony of Scripture. It condenses within 
a small compass the substance and import 
of all that has been conceived and so 
often said and sung to allure the young 
to the indulgence of illicit desire, to en- 
courage and embolden them in the mad 
career of dissipation and vice. It is an 



A PRESENT FROM A PASTOR. 189 

epitome of the deceitful sophistry of the 
passions, — a sample of the enticing lan- 
guage of sinful pleasure. This " reeling 
goddess with the zoneless waist," this 
painted harlot, that has slain her thous- 
ands and ten thousands of youth of either 
sex and cast down her many thousands 
even of strong men ; this deceiver, some- 
times under the guise of liberty, and 
sometimes even of philosophy and reason, 
teaching the young to follow nature, 
standeth at the corners of the streets, or 
in the saloons of luxury, and her voice, 
ye simple ones, is unto you. Her look 
is smiling. Her attire is gay and flaunt- 
ing, and she presents herself, 

" Drest to the taste of lustful appetence." 

Her voice is soft and melodious. She has 
at command the honied accents of persua- 
sion, is mistress of many a plausible and 
seducing argument, of a thousand fair and 
beguiling promises. None of the agonies 
of her heart are visible in her face. 



190 A PRESENT 

These she conceals beneath the smiles 
and gayety of that false laughter, in the 
midst of which the heart is. sad. "My 
name," she says, " is happiness. I have 
built the fair mansions of delight ; with 
me dwell the joys of independence and 
liberty, the free indulgence of inclina- 
tion, fearless revelry and heart-cheering 
mirth. Religion, conscience, God, eter- 
nity, a judgment to come — these are 
themes unknown to me and my votaries. 
We leave these matters to fanatics and 
hypocrites. We are philosophers and 
our philosophy is to be happy, while we 
may. To philosophers, belief in one God, 
in twenty Gods, or no God, is much the 
same thing. If there be a God, we can 
not suppose that he would wish to abridge 
our pleasures. If there be a judgment 
to come, we do not fear that he will call 
us to account for gratifying inclinations 
which he gave us. If there be a heaven, 
it must be intended for us all to be happy 



FROM A PASTOR. 191 

there together. Come, then, ye who are 
in the morning of your day and eager to 
be happy ; come to the mansions of plea- 
sure. For you I have spread my banquet. 
I have decked my house with tapestry 
and fine linen of Egypt. The shades of 
night shall conceal us from every intru- 
ding eye. What ! afraid ! held back by 
conscience and the childish prejudices of 
the nursery and the church ? Religion 
is all priest-craft. Morality is a name 
invented by hypocrites. The only moral- 
ity we know is to rejoice while we may, 
and to be happy to-day, come what will 
to-morrow. Time is flying ; old age is 
advancing. You will be crippled ere 
long, and incapable of tasting the delights, 
which give all its charm to the spring- 
time of life. Come, then, along with us. 
The wine is sparkling in the cup. We 
have crowned our head with roses. The 
sound of the tabret and the dance 
shall be heard. The prejudices of your 



192 A PRESENT 

childhood, the terrors of superstition shall 
be banished. Religion, if it be a reality, 
can not contradict nature. The God of 
nature will not condemn us for following 
nature. 

u What joys have the disciples of reli- 
gion to compare with ours ? See their 
austerity and gloom. The cross is a fit 
emblem of their profession. They serve 
a master who interdicts to his slaves the 
cup of pleasure. To please him they 
are taught that they must deny them- 
selves. They rail at us from envy, and 
in secret sigh for the pleasures, which 
they have not the courage to taste. Dis- 
card, then, your idle fears. Take pleas- 
ure while it is within your reach. If 
there be an eye that seeth in secret, that 
eye will regard with indulgence the grat- 
ification of our natural inclinations and 
desires." 

Such, and much more like it, is the 
language of illicit pleasure and her vota- 



FROM A PASTOR. 193 

ries. Parents and the friends of the 
young have cause to tremble for their 
safety, when it is considered that the in- 
experience and innocence of youth is 
often assailed by language like this. 
They hear it at the corners of the streets 
and in the haunts of the idle and profli- 
gate in our cities. They are especially 
exposed to be enticed and drawn away 
by it, when they first go abroad into the 
world. And I cannot but fear for the 
young, when I consider that there is so 
much unbelief abroad among us. The 
young catch the language, and adopt the 
sentiments of their elders. And the lax 
principles, and the light talk, which they 
hear, are but too much in unison with 
the wishes of the youthful heart, in that 
hurricane season of life, when the pas- 
sions first awake, and the thirst for 
pleasure becomes a fever. When they 
hear religion called in question by fash- 
ionable and hoary libertines, and future 
17 



194 A PRESENT 

retribution, perhaps a future life, doubted 
or denied, they easily persuade them- 
selves that wisdom and truth must be on 
the side of pleasure, and that that must 
be a very good sort of faith, which sets 
them free from the restraints of con- 
science, and the terrors of a future judg- 
ment. When I consider, moreover, the 
pernicious examples which the young 
witness in the mature in years, — in pop- 
ular public men, and too often in their 
parents, — the total neglect of domestic 
discipline, and of religious instruction in 
so many families among us, and of do- 
mestic worship in still more, — the indo- 
lent and luxurious habits that for a long 
time have been making progress in our 
country, and the prevalence of the palat- 
able doctrine of the dissolute Charles II., 
that " God will damn no one for taking 
a little pleasure, " meaning by pleasure, 
the most unbounded licentiousness ; — 
when in addition to all this, I consider 



FROM A PASTOR. 195 

the ardor and strength of the passions in 
youth and their vehement cravings for 
gratification, I cannot but regard the 
young as encompassed with great and 
peculiar perils. 

Besides and above all is it to be feared 
that, if the young set at nought religion, 
and deviate from purity and sobriety of 
mind in the spring-time of life, the sea- 
son most favorable for forming the char- 
acter to habits of virtue and piety, the 
character never will be so formed. There 
are, it is true, rare and remarkable 
instances of recovery from early habits of 
dissoluteness, — memorable examples of a 
sincere and permanent, though late re- 
turn to a sober, righteous and godly 
life. But the natural effect of time is to 
harden the heart, to confirm the man in 
his habits, be they good or bad. Dif- 
ferent from those colors produced by art, 
which fade, as they wax old, moral stains 
grow deeper by time. The heart of the 



196 A PRESENT 

early corrupted, of the habitual trans- 
gressor, becomes by time more unyield- 
ingly set to do evil. The hue of his 
character becomes fixed. He is like the 
Ethiopian in point of permanency of 
complexion. Those, on the other hand, 
who seek me early, says the God of truth, 
shall find me. Habits of serious consider- 
ation, of piety, and self-control, formed 
in youth, are almost certain to be per- 
manent. And youth is the season, it 
cannot be too often repeated, in which 
habits of some kind or other will cer- 
tainly take root. The young mind pre- 
sents the good ground, in which the 
seeds of every virtuous quality may be 
sown, with the hope of their ripening 
into fruit. The heart has not yet been 
hardened by intercourse with the world. 
It has not been seared by the fires of 
unholy passions, — nor chilled and petri- 
fied with disappointment, and care, and 
selfishness. And the experience of every 



FROM A PASTOR. 197 

age testifies, that the manhood and old 
age, that have been distinguished by 
virtue and piety, were preceded by a 
youth of religious sobriety, the early de- 
votion of the heart to God and duty. 
And God has distinctly declared his will 
that the young should devote to him the 
dew and freshness of their youth, in the 
injunction, to which I have so often re- 
ferred, requiring his ancient people to 
bring to his altar for sacrifice the first- 
lings of the flock, the first flowers of the 
spring, and the first fruits of the year. 
So numerous are the reasons, that urge 
the pleas of religion with peculiar force 
upon the young, — their danger as ex- 
posed to the seductions of illicit pleasure, 
— the levity and indulgence, with which 
compliance with these seductions is re- 
garded in fashionable circles, — the cor- 
rupt examples and the avowed skepticism 
of many of their elders, — the false light 
in which a religious life is regarded by 
17* 



198 A PRESENT 

the unreflecting, — above all, the favor- 
able opportunities, which if neglected in 
youth, can never be recalled. 

My object, at present, is to combat 
those false and specious arguments of the 
licentious and dissolute, that theirs is a 
happier course than that prescribed by 
religion, which they represent as gloomy 
and forbidding ; and that there can be no 
harm, nothing wrong, in gratifying incli- 
nations, which God, or, as they say, 
nature has given us. And I shall briefly 
urge in conclusion the solemn admonition 
to deter the young from sin, with which 
the text concludes, "know thou that for 
all these things God will bring thee into 
judgment. 

I. First, then ; although the dissolute, 
the votaries of illicit pleasure, begin by 
persuading the young that there is no 
truth in religion, — that their opinion upon 
the subject is as probable as another; 
yet -their strong point is, that only in 



FROM A PASTOR. 199 

pleasure, in the unrestrained indulgence 
of the inclinations and desires, which 
nature has given us, is happiness to be 
found, and that religion is altogether a 
needless discipline of painful self-denial, 
of rigor, sadness and gloom. I grant 
that a religious man has none of the 
ebullitions and transports of that tumul- 
tuous revelry of the passions and senses, 
which resemble the sudden blaze and 
crackling of thorns upon a cold hearth. 
Still, it is a willful calumny, a manifest 
libel upon religion to represent her course 
as overshadowed with gloom, or as in 
any respect unfriendly to the innocent 
joys of youth, to any of the rational 
pleasures of life. Our Saviour — and his 
authority none will dispute — has bidden 
his disciples, even when they fast, still 
to retain the aspect of cheerfulness and 
joy, — to anoint the head and wash the face. 
But granting that, from wrong notions of 
the nature of religion, from mistaken 



200 A PRESENT 

views of the character of God, there are 
those who have represented religion as 
allied to gloom, austerity and sadness, 
yet even the sadness of the religious man, 
his contrition and tears convey more real 
felicity to the secret chambers of the soul, 
than all the loud and turbulent joys and 
revelry of the licentious and dissolute. 
Happiness or misery, we know, is alto- 
gether in the hidden recesses of the soul. 
We well know that the face may wear 
the aspect of festivity and joy, while the 
heart is wrung with anguish. In the 
gayest circles God sees many a bosom 
throbbing with pain, or oppressed with 
grief, while the countenance is radiant 
with smiles. I would admonish the 
young not to be duped by this deceitful 
show of happiness, and I would make you 
sensible, if I could, that a youth, who 
begins life with reverently remembering 
his Creator and walking in the way of his 
holy commandments, — who holds on in 



FROM A PASTOR. 201 

the ways of religion and duty with unfal- 
tering step to the end, has had at his last 
hour, even if there were no hereafter, a 
thousand and a thousand times the great- 
est sum of true enjoyment compared with 
that of the dissolute man of pleasure, as 
he is called. 

Tell me, ye who have made the 
experiment, is happiness to be found 
in scenes of dissipation, in the intoxicat- 
ing bowl, in the giddy mazes of the mid- 
night dance, in the sounds of the viol and 
the harp, — in the libidinous jest and the 
lascivious song, in the harlot smile of 
tainted beauty, in the maddening mirth 
and revelry and the impure orgies that 
are consummated in the concealed haunts 
of fashionable vice, the crowded hells of 
licentiousness ? Have you found happi- 
ness in scenes like these ? You well 
know what a weight of weariness, what 
a heavy and comfortless gloom hangs 
over the hours that follow these scenes. 
You well know, and thousands have ac- 



202 A PRESENT 

knowledged that it is the insupportable 
dreariness and gloom, the oppressive 
vacuity of the hours that intervene, which 
makes the slaves of a life of pleasure, as 
it is wofully miscalled, impatient and in 
haste to return to the same revelries only 
to be rid of thought and of themselves. 

But who does not know that happiness 
is a still and quiet thing, — something that 
springs up in the heart from hidden sour- 
ces of refreshment, — 

"That peace, which goodness bosoms ever," 

which has its headspring 

" Pure in the last recesses of the mind." 

It is a stream that flows gently, but is 
regular and constant. But the pleasures 
of the dissolute and licentious are a tor- 
rent that foams and rushes rapidly along 
for a brief space, and then subsides into 
a dead, stagnant, mephitic pool. Though 
for a time they afford a tumultuous de- 
light, yet being often repeated they lose 



FROM A PASTOR. 203 

their power to please. Disrelish, apathy, 
seared affections, an unquiet mind follow- 
in their rear. The heart, having satiated 
its desires, grows cold, and, like a bank- 
rupt who has exhausted all his resources, 
shuts itself up in sullen seclusion and 
disgust towards every thing. It has 
nothing more to enjoy, having drained 
the cup of sensual joys to the dregs ; and 
it is dead to all the pure and hallowed 
pleasures of virtuous affection, of religious 
faith, hope and charity. Conceive more- 
over the early votary of licentious pleas- 
ure become prematurely old ; for the 
dissolute youth, no less than the most 
virtuous, hopes to live to old age, which 
sometimes happens to the most depraved. 
Behold him, then, grown gray in his sins, 
a dissolute, forlorn old man, living on 
joylessly without God and without hope. 
See him tottering with disease and infirmity 
and made to possess, as the Scripture ex- 
presses it, the iniquities of his youth, — 



204 A PRESENT 

reeling perhaps with intemperance upon 
the brink of the grave opening to receive 
him. Think of him listening to the still, 
small voice of conscience ; for the near 
approach of death usually gives a tongue 
to conscience. How dark and cheerless 
his reflections ! Will he look back upon 
the past for comfort ? No ; " that way 
lies madness/' There he sees only 
proofs of his folly and his guilt. To what 
will he look forward ? Will he dwell 
with complacency upon the pious senti- 
ments, the virtuous habits, the useful 
knowledge stored up in his youth, and 
upon the promised rewards of well doing 
laid up for him in heaven ? Alas, he has 
no such comforters to console him. Old 
age comes to him without any of these 
reliefs, without a single ray of light from 
heaven to dispel its darkness and to soften 
its horrors. The clouds that gather over 
his head is like the approaching glooms 
of a winter that is to have no end. He 
sees in retrospect a long track of years, 



FROM A PASTOR. 205 

thick set with marks and memorials of 
duties neglected, of opportunities unim- 
proved, of time misspent, of vicious 
appetites indulged, and disorderly pas- 
sions unchecked, that have warred against 
his soul, and in prospect that righteous 
tribunal, before which he must appear to 
receive according to his deeds. In view 
of all this, methinks I hear you exclaim, 
0, my soul, come not thou into his secret 
place ; be not thou joined to the assembly of 
the wicked! 

Would you think that this forlorn 
victim of early licentiousness, stricken 
with premature decrepitude, his heart 
as dark and cold as the grave over 
which he is trembling, is the same indi- 
vidual, who in his youth with bounding 
heart and feverish pulse, and reckless 
hilarity, followed pleasure to her last 
haunts, draining her circean cup to its 
bitter sediments, doubting whether there 
be a God or any life but the present, and 
18 



206 A PRESENT 

who laughed at the sober and religious, 
as cheated by priestcraft ? Who would 
think it, that the sin-worn remnants of 
humanity, the mournful monuments of 
pollution and despair, with which we 
sometimes meet, were once the gayest of 
the gay, the foremost in all the resorts of 
fashionable amusements and nightly revel- 
ings ? Who would once have thought 
that all their gayety would have come to 
this ? Yet so it is, deluded votaries of 
pleasure, meaning to be blest, ye find 
yourselves undone. After the first in- 
toxication of your guilty joys is over, 
your prospect darkens, your downward 
course grows steeper and more rapid. 
You lose sight of innocence, virtue, 
heaven and hope, and you come in the 
end to be that moving picture of ruin and 
woe, which I have attempted to describe. 
Ycu see, on the contrary, when you 
see a religious man only the 'outside. It 
ought indeed, and we wish it might ever 
be seen to wear a smile. But the ark of 



FROM A PASTOR. 207 

God, we read, was covered with skins 
and unadorned without ; yet within was 
a radiant token of the perpetual presence 
of God. The heart of a good man, though 
his countenance may often wear the marks 
of care and be ruffled by the storms of the 
world, is nevertheless the sanctuary of 
peace, and its inmost recesses are always 
irradiated with faith and hope. There is 
always to a good mind something unspeak- 
ably pleasant in the conscientious dis- 
charge of duty. There is a heart-cheering 
sensation, a delightful feeling of self- 
approval, of moral elevation, even in 
self-denials and self-sacrifices, that are 
prompted and practiced from a sacred 
regard to the will of God. The pleasures 
of the religious man are pleasures which 
God and conscience approve, his joys are 
joys that refresh without hurt or harm to 
the soul. He is like the eagle in that, 
while he stoops to the earth for his 
necessary food, he never loses sight of 



208 A PRESENT 

the heavens, which are his native region. 
Hope leads him on from one duty to 
another, from strength to strength, al- 
ways pointing him to his rest and reward 
in his Father's house in heaven. He is 
respected even by those who have no 
sympathy with his principles and hopes, 
because he walks uprightly, is faithful to 
his trusts, and conducts himself in all his 
intercourse with the world, with the 
consistency and dignity of a man, who is 
hoping and preparing for a better country 
even an heavenly. He is beloved by 
those who are like him, who have drunk 
into the same spirit with him ; for relig- 
ion, breathing as it does a spirit of benig- 
nity and love, softens the heart, renders 
it tender and humane, and makes man 
kind and charitable to man. It makes its 
disciple a constant and faithful lover or 
friend, a useful citizen, an affectionate 
and good husband, parent or child. And 
when called to rest from his labors, and he 



FROM A PASTOR. 209 

sees his end appraching, he lies down, — 
not as the irreligious and unbelieving do 
at the best, to meet death with a reckless 
indifference or sullen despair, knowing 
that it cannot be avoided. — but he pours 
his soul around him in kind counsels and 
benevolent benedictions, and departs in 
peace not doubting that he goes to repose 
in the bosom of blessedness, the bosom 
of his Father and his God. Such are the 
brief and prominent outlines of a compari- 
son between the character and issues of 
a life of early licentiousness and irrelig- 
ion and a life of early piety and virtue. 

II. The second plea or argument of 
the dissolute in justification of their licen- 
tious practices is that there can be no 
harm, nothing sinful, in gratifying incli- 
nations which God or nature has given 
us. Much stress, I know, is laid by 
sensualists upon following nature. And 
what is nature ? Why, with them it is 
the brute instincts and propensities of the 
18* 



210 A. PRESENT 

mere human animal. With them to fol- 
low nature is to do whatever appetite 
prompts. But to this the reply is obvious ; 
it is nature, — unless they disclaim all dis- 
tinction between brute and human nature, 
— it is the prerogative of man's nature to 
follow reason. It is reason, that constitutes 
the broad and essential difference between 
the nature of man and that of the mere 
animal. Reason is a self-directing, uni- 
form and steady principle. Passion, 
appetite is blind and reckless, and unless 
controlled by reason, makes the man a 
slave to its impulses and cravings, what- 
ever they may be. Vicious, excessive 
appetite is a disease, that does not belong 
to man's nature. It is a thing of his own 
creating. Is the inebriate following na- 
ture, when he has so indulged and in- 
flamed his appetite, that there is no re- 
sisting its demands, no satisfying its 
cravings but by excess ? You might as 
well argue that it is following nature to 
bite and devour one another in the mad- 



FROM A PASTOR. 211 

ness of anger, because we have weapons 
to kill and destroy, and because the rage 
of passion and revenge sometimes prompts 
men to use them. True, indeed, God 
has given us passions and appetites, but 
is it nature to be governed by them ? 
No, surely; for, if you avoid temptation 
and do not voluntarily indulge and invite 
incentives to stimulate them, they will 
never become importunate for gratifica- 
tion. But if you fan the sparks of illicit 
desire, you may soon raise a flame that 
you cannot control ; and if your inno- 
cence and virtue are involved and con- 
sumed in the conflagration, you might as 
well say it is following nature to burn up 
our houses, because God has given us fire 
to warm us. Be assured that to follow 
nature is to follow reason ; and reason 
tells you that in the illicit or excessive 
indulgence of passion and appetite you 
are sure to lose health and innocence, 
understanding and peace of mind, a good 
name, and the capacity of accomplishing 



212 A PRESENT 

the ends, for which God has created you 
with an intelligent and moral nature. It 
is true, God has given us passions. But 
He has also given us reason to inform us 
that irregularity or excess in the indul- 
gence of them is fatal to happiness and 
usefulness in this life, — conscience to tell 
ns that, if we thus indulge them, we sin 
against God and our own souls, — and 
religion to assure us that for all these 
things God will bring us into judgment. 

I have not time to meet and reply fully 
to that ultimate argument of vice and 
unbelief, that there is nothing certain in 
religion, that every thing about it is mat- 
ter of dispute, and that most likely there 
is nothing after death. 

The young of my charge will permit 
me, as their religious monitor and friend, 
and wishing, as I do, above all things to 
see them early walking in the truth, most 
earnestly and affectionately to caution 
them against imbibing this dreary and 



FROM A PASTOR. 213 

hopeless sentiment, as false as the father 
of lies, from whom it originates, and not 
more false than it is fatal to all true worth 
and excellence. It is the sure bane of 
all that is noble, disinterested and god- 
like in the human character. It will 
poison the sources of the heart's best 
affections and happiness. It will take 
from you the shield of virtue, and leave 
you with nothing but your own traitorous 
appetites and passions, with which to 
meet the assaults of temptation and vice. 
If it were true, the chief ground for gain- 
saying and bidding you beware of the 
seducing language and specious arguments 
of illicit pleasure and its licentious vota- 
ries, would be taken from us. But were 
it even so, it would nevertheless be a 
fearful truth for you to hear. Believe it 
not, for, if all the phenomena of the uni- 
verse be not a lie, if all without and 
within the soul of man be not illusion, 
then be assured it is not true. Every 



214 A PRESENT 

thing in the analogy of nature, in the 
providence, as well as the word of God, 
proclaims a future life and a judgment to 
come. The very structure and erect 
aspect of man, viewed in connection with 
his intellectual and moral powers, strong- 
ly intimate that he was not made to perish 
forever in dust and oblivion with the 
beasts that perish. Arguments and 
proofs, which the most acute and learned 
unbelievers have never been able to re- 
fute, have been drawn even from nature. 
But we have a more sure testimony than 
these can give. We have in the Chris- 
tian scriptures the declaration and exam- 
ple of one, commissioned from heaven to 
bring life and immortality to light, or 
more properly to illustrate by his resur- 
rection and bring down to our senses a 
future life. He has left us his testimony 
to this momentous truth, confirmed by 
evidence the most clear and conclusive, 
that he spake in the name and by the 



FROM A PASTOR. 215 

authority of the everlasting God. He 
thus confirms all that was spoken by the 
long list of divine messengers and proph- 
ets that preceded him, and with the 
rest, the declaration of the text, that for 
all these things, i. e. for all the illicit and 
debasing pleasures of a licentious youth, 
— God will bring you into judgment. This 
greatest and last messenger has assured 
you that they that have done good shall 
come forth to the resurrection of life? and 
they that have done evil to the resurrection of 
condemnation. This is the plain unequiv- 
ocal declaration of that man, whom God 
has commissioned and qualified to judge 
the world, whereof, says the apostle, he 
hath given assurance to all men in that he 
hath raised him from the dead. It must be 
the extreme of rashness and folly to credit 
the shallow urguments of corrupt and 
therefore prejudiced men against religion 
in preference to the words of truth and 
soberness from him, who spake as never 
man spake. 



216 A PRESENT 

Let me then urge the young, who hear 
me, to put away that levity and inconsid- 
eration, and to resist every inclination 
and allurement to the criminal indulgence 
of those appetites and passions, which in 
youth expose them to become the easy 
prey of temptation, the early depraved 
and abandoned victims of licentious and 
dissolute habits. On you will depend, — 
I cannot too often repeat it, — the charac- 
ter of the next generation. On you the 
friends of virtue, of religion and their 
country turn their eyes to learn from your 
early deportment and habits what that 
generation is to be, whether a seed to 
seek and serve the God of their fathers, 
to raise the moral tone and to improve 
the manners of the age, or a degenerate 
race, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of 
God, walking by sight and not by faith, 
living without God and without hope in 
the world. Believe, and let the belief 
sink deep into your young hearts, that 



FROM A PASTOR. 217 

the only sure basis of a virtuous charac- 
ter, of an honorable and happy life, a 
peaceful death and "a blessed immortality, 
is early piety and sobriety of mind. Take 
therefore for your guide the instructions 
of that divine Teacher, who when he be- 
held the young man, who had kept the 
commandments from his youth, loved him. 
As his disciples, early devote yourselves 
to God, each of you addressing to him 
daily the prayer of the young Israelite of 
old, " My Father , be thou the guide of my 
youth." He will receive the offering of 
your young and pure affections, as he did 
of old, the first flowers of the spring, the 
first fruits of the year and the fairest and 
unblemished firstlings of the flock. Settle 
in your minds, as eternal truth, that a 
religious and pure life is the only safe and 
happy life, — that, early commencing such 
a life, the habit of religion, of self-gov- 
ernment, and of well-doing will grow into 
your nature, — that they will thus become 
19 



218 A PRESENT FROM A PASTOR. 

easy and pleasant to you — that by living 
such a life you will escape those bitter 
regrets, that heart-wringing remorse, — 
the shame and fears and doubts, which 
are ever attendant upon a return to God 
and duty, after having wandered long in 
the ways of folly and sin. You will be 
able to approach God at all times with 
the confidence, with which dutiful and 
obedient children approach the presence 
of a good and wise earthly parent. The 
Father of your spirits will own and guide 
and bless you; and you shall go at last 
to dwell in his heavenly presence with 
exceeding joy, seeing that you offered to 
him the dew of your youth, the morning 
of your day, the noon of your manhood, 
and not merely the worthless remains of 
your exhausted strength, — of an enfeebled 
and decrepid old age. God grant this 
happiness to the young of my charge for 
his infinite mercy's sake. Amen. 



219 



DISCOURSE VII. 

THE YOUNG EXHORTED TO BE SOBER MINDED. 

Titus, ii. 6. — Young men likewise exhort 
to be sober' minded. 

In whatever light we contemplate the 
young, whether as the pride and joy of 
parents, the objects of their tenderest 
affection and solicitude, or as the hope of 
their country, who are to determine the 
character of the coming generation, they 
are, as they ought to be, to the ministers 
of religion, to all instructors of youth, the 
objects of their deepest interest and most 
vigilant care. 

It has been a thousand times observed 
that the young are to the coming age 
what spring is to the ensuing year. On 
you, who are preparing to enter upon the 
untried paths of life, not only the hopes 



220 A PRESENT 

and happiness of your parents are sus- 
pended ; but to you the eyes of the age, 
that is passing away, are turned to read 
in the character which you are forming, 
in the principles upon which you are 
beginning to act, and in the habits, which 
you are bringing with you into the scenes 
of duty and trial, that are opening before 
you, — the character of the age which is 
to follow. In every point of view yours 
is the period of life for receiving and 
cherishing all kinds of salutary impres- 
sions, — impressions which shall lead you 
to the formation of right habits, to a wise 
and discreet regulation of your intercourse 
with your fellow-men, — impressions, 
above all, which shall give the coloring 
to your character and condition during 
the successive ages of that eternal futu- 
rity, to which we are all alike hastening. 
Youth is peculiarly the favored time for 
receiving and cherishing moral and relig- 
ious impressions. It is so regarded 



FROM A PASTOR. 221 

throughout the Scriptures. Were I to 
attempt the recital of all the passages, 
which hold out earnest and affectionate 
invitations to the young to consecrate 
their earliest thoughts and affections to 
God, — to remember their Creator in the 
days of their youth, and all the ample 
promises of a welcome and cordial recep- 
tion for those who seek God early, — the 
gracious assurances that he will be found 
of them, — that He will remember them, 
the kindness of their youth, the love of their 
espousals, i. e. their entering into cove- 
nant with God to be his obedient, confid- 
ing children through life,, — and that he 
will be to such the guide of their youth, 
their God and portion forever, — I should 
have to transcribe no inconsiderable por- 
tion of the hortatory contents of the Bible. 
Regarding therefore, the possible influ- 
ence of religious counsel upon the minds 
of the young in the happy effect which, 
by God's blessing, it may produce upon 
19* 



222 A PRESENT 

your forming character and future well 
being, you will bear, I trust, with your 
pastor and friend, who remembers that 
Jesus bade his ministers, feed his lambs, 
if he gives you line upon line, and precept 
upon precept, — if he urges even to thread- 
bare repetition the infinite importance of 
the principles you early imbibe, of the 
habits you early form. 

Instead of distracting your attention 
and my own with the great variety of 
motives, that I might urge upon you to 
be early sober minded, I shall dwell 
briefly in this discourse only on the fol- 
lowing : 

I. There is enough in life, if you will 
survey it attentively, and as experience 
will one day present it to you, to induce 
early sobriety of mind. 

II. Youth is the period of peculiar 
promise and fitness for forming the habit 
of mind, or character, which my text 
bids me exhort you to acquire. 



FROM A PASTOR. 223 

III. The influence and permanence of 
early formed habits of religious sobriety 
of mind. 

IV. And I shall advert in conclusion 
to a wide-spread and seductive agency, 
which operates with a secret but power- 
ful influence to give a bias to the minds 
of the young the reverse of the religious 
sobriety I am to recommend. 

I. If you could see life, as it is, and 
as we who have made trial of it see it, 
the earnest and solemn appeals and ex- 
hortations of the Bible, admonishing you 
of the importance of early cultivating a 
religious sobriety of mind, would not be 
needed. Parents and ministers would 
not need to press so incessantly upon you 
these appeals and exhortations. The 
necessity of the serious, religious habit 
of mind in question would be felt by you 
with a force, which no words of mine 
could convey. You would see snares 
and perils where you now see only paths 



224 A PRESENT 

strewed with flowers, and leading you, as 
you dream, to the regions of joy, of securi- 
ty and content. You would see clouds, 
now concealed from your cheated vision, 
rising from various points in the horizon ; 
and you would fly, without any exhorta- 
tion from your pastor or friends, for shelter 
and protection from the storms of life to 
the altar of piety, the ark of religion. 
You would feel the necessity of early 
making your refuge in the shadow of the 
Almighty. 

But this view cannot be taken by you. 
It is part of the inscrutable plan of Prov- 
idence, — of Him who doeth all things 
well, though often times darkly to us, — 
that nothing shall anticipate the gradual 
teachings of the slow and hard-earned 
lessons of experience. We, who have 
been taught these lessons, saw the illu- 
sions of life, as you now see them painted 
by hope. The opening prospect smiled 
before us, as it now does before you. All 



FROM A PASTOR. 225 

to us, as it now is to you, was illusion, 
romance and hope. Pleasure and ambi- 
tion and fortune each beckoned us to 
their several walks, and we saw not the 
dangers and toils, none of the hardships, 
the heart- withering disappointments, bit- 
ter regrets and sore travail of life, which 
sad after-experience found out for us in 
these scenes of illusive show and promise. 
Perhaps it is well that it should be so. 
Perhaps do I sa} r ? It certainly is well. 
It is certainly so arranged in infinite wis- 
dom. If you saw all this painted vision 
of life before you, as we see it, who have 
detected the cheat, — could you anticipate 
but one of a thousand of the . cares, 
conflicts, struggles, disappointments and 
sorrows, that await you, — I mean only 
such as are common and inevitable, — it 
would too early bring over your young 
and fair brows the sad and misplaced 
marks of experience and premature ac- 
quaintance with life, as it is. 



226 A PRESENT 

I here lay out of the case the danger 
of giving way to your passions, the fatal 
results of wandering widely astray from 
innocence, from virtue and a good name. 
I lay out of the case disease and deep 
sorrow, bereavement and parting with 
friends, torn from you by the unpitying 
hand of death. I figure to myself only 
the common misfortunes, the unavoidable 
disappointments and ills of life, as they 
are felt by spirits that have been educated 
and prepared by the wisest early disci- 
pline and self-culture. If you could see 
all these, as you will one day see them, 
— I do not say that the view would, or 
ought to make you gloomy, morose, or 
unhappy, — I say only that it would leave 
your religious monitors no occasion for 
these exhortations, for it would make 
you sober minded of course. Instead of 
shrinking with dismay from the great 
probation, the inevitable- conflict before 
you, you would see, you would feel, the 



FROM A PASTOR, 227 

indispensable necessity of forming early 
habits of reflection, of fore-thought, of 
religious sobriety of mind, Such a pro- 
spective view would teach you the neces- 
sity of looking for help and consolation 
beyond an arm of flesh, — the necessity of 
securing the favor, that you may lean 
with confidence for support and protection 
upon the strength of the Almighty. We, 
who have gone before you, see and know 
that there will be exigencies, and trials, 
very many and great, in which philosophy 
with all its boasted resources can do no 
more than teach you a sullen, desperate, 
perhaps silent, though in your heart 
repining submission, — trials, in which 
nothing but a mind sobered and fortified 
by early habits of reflection, by early 
piety and religious trust, can stand you 
in stead and keep your soul in peace. 
Hope as you may; — promise yourselves 
what you will ; reach after the painted 
illusions and chase the rainbow phantoms 



228 A PRESENT 

of life, as your passions and your imagi- 
nation may prompt you, the world, the so 
often-tried experiment of life will be just 
to you what it has been to I he countless 
millions who have gone before you, as it 
will be to those who come after. The 
full view of it, however, as it is and will 
be, ought to produce, as I have said, 
neither depression, nor shrinking, nor 
fear to take its allotments, as they come ; 
but it ought to produce precisely that 
early seriousness and sobriety of mind, 
which I am anxious to recommend, — a 
calm prospective survey of the duties, 
the exigencies and inevitable trials of 
life, and the sage purpose of the wise man 
to provide a shelter, to which you may 
retreat from the stormy wind and tempest, 
when they arise. And be assured, there 
is no shelter but in sobriety of mind and 
early habits of piety. 

II. Yours, again, is a period of pe- 
culiar promise and fitness, in which to 



FROM A PASTOR. 229 

acquire these habits. I am aware that 
these remarks may seem trite, — that this 
is beaten ground over which you have 
often traveled before with your parents, 
instructors or pastor. I am equally 
aware too that it can never be inculcated 
upon you too often, that if you ever 
mean to acquire these habits, if you de- 
sire ever to possess sobriety of mind, a 
religious and virtuous character, youth is 
the time to make these acquisitions, and 
o form this character. If you have not 
resolved and are content to live and to die 
strangers to the love and peace of God, 
and never to know any thing of a true 
religious sobriety of mind, of a deep 
heart-felt piety, let me urge upon you 
the importance of commencing your ac- 
quaintance with God, the cultivation of 
pious sentiment, and habits of serious 
consideration and self-discipline early in 
life, before the contrary habits of incon- 
sideration and levity, if not of dissolute- 
20 



230 A PRESENT 

ness and vice, are worn into your nature, 
— before intercourse with the world shall 
have hardened your heart, — before ex- 
amples of irreligion, oblivion of things 
spiritual and eternal, and confirmed hab- 
its of conformity to the maxims and man- 
ners of a worldly life shall have given a 
fixed obliquity to your character, — before 
your natural tenderness of heart shall be 
seared and dried up by communion with 
the frivolous, the selfish and the alienated 
from God. 

The time to be occupied by other 
reflections forbids my enlarging upon 
this topic ; and I can only, with pa- 
ternal solicitude and affection, implore of 
you, to improve the favored time to con- 
secrate the early prime and vigor of your 
pure affections to God and the highest 
and only enduring objects and interests 
of your being, and to yield the sway and 
bias of your heart, as yet uncontaminated, 
and the moulding of your character, as 
yet unformed, to the influences of religious 



FROM A PASTOR. 231 

consideration and sobriety of mind. — 
Every thing calls and encourages you to 
this course. Earnest determination and 
endeavors will now ensure success. — 
Every thing that you can rationally desire 
may be easily obtained at this period of 
life, while the heart is warm, the affec- 
tions ardent and the character flexible. 
By and by every thing will be changed. 
The heart will be filled with the world ; 
for it must be filled with that or the love 
of goodness and excellence. The affec- 
tions will become blighted by the sad 
finding of what the world really is, of 
deceived confidences, of disappointed 
hopes. The character will have acquired 
the fixed rigidity of habit, and you will 
have learned the terrible import of that 
appeal in Scripture ; can the Ethiopian 
change his skin, or the leopard his spots ? 
Then may you who are accustomed to do evil 
learn to do well. You have a promise too 
of the most animating encouragement, 



232 A PRESENT 

the promise of God's peculiar aid and 
blessing. I need not repeat to you the 
many passages of Scripture alluded to 
in the commencement of this discourse, 
that invite the young to remember and 
to devote their earliest affections to God. 
I need not remind you again of the beau- 
tiful and significant sacrifice required of 
God's people of old, the first flowers 
of the spring, the first fruits of the year, 
and the fairest firstlings of the flocks 
without spot or blemish. 

It needs none of my feeble efforts to 
paint the beauty of early piety, how 
amiable, how dear it renders the young 
to good men and to God. It needs no 
argument to show in what light those 
young persons must appear who, ap- 
proach God with their affections yet un- 
scathed by the world, all pure and sincere, 
with hearts ductile as wax, all whose 
imaginations and wishes are yet innocent 
and unacquainted with evil, and thus 



FROM A PASTOR. 233 

make to him the acceptable offering of 
the morning of their existence, the dew 
of their youth, the freshness and fragrance 
of their young and unsullied affections. 
The heart that would not feel the beauty 
of this offering at the first contemplation 
of it, would hardly be persuaded to a 
better appreciation of it by any words of 
mine. I will only add the paternal and 
encouraging promise of God to the 
young ; / love them that love me, and they 
that seek me early shall find me. 

III. To the foregoing considerations 
let me add once more, that of the known 
influence, the permanence, I had almost 
said, the omnipotence, of early habits. — 
Every one knows that we remember 
through life the events and incidents of 
our youth. Every one knows with what 
delight old men recur to the home scenes, 
the happy and innocent attachments, the 
enchanting novelty and freshness of their 
early days. When the recent events of 
20* 



234 A PRESENT 

their waning life but transiently interest, 
or impress them, — are all blended, con- 
fused, or forgotten, — they love to go 
back to their spring-time of life, — fondly 
and vividly to retrace the enjoyments, 
the occupations and dreams of that happy 
period, and delightfully to live over the 
pleasant years of their boyhood and 
youth. This shows us how strongly every 
thing is impressed upon the heart and 
character, that is early stamped upon 
them, before they are all figured over, 
underwritten and interscored with deep 
impressions of the withering and searing 
cares and interests, disappointments and 
sorrows, if not the vices of the world. 

The stream, that flows constantly in 
one direction, soon cuts for itself a-deep 
channel. The casual actions or affections 
of to-day are more easily repeated to- 
morrow, and repeated again and again 
become importunate inclinations, which 
soon grow into habits, and then are iden- 



FROM A PASTOR. 235 

tified with the daily conscious existence, 
and constitute a part of the moral nature 
of the agent. Thus early sobriety, early 
thoughts of God, pious sentiments and 
dispositions cherished and fostered from 
day to day, as the young advance in life, 
will sit easy and natural, and soon be in- 
wrought into the texture of the character 
and strengthened with all the unyielding 
force of established habit. 

And it is a consideration, that ought 
deeply to impress the minds of parents 
and of children, that habits of some kind 
or other must and will be formed. No 
one can grow up without receiving on the 
ductile, susceptible heart, either the im- 
press of sobriety, of religious reverence 
and virtuous manners, or traits of an op- 
posite character. Every young person 
is receiving the impress of one or the 
other of these ; and the impressions al- 
ready made are daily becoming more and 
more a part of the moral nature, — of the 
conscious being, of each individual. 



236 A PRESENT 

How easily do we discover the unwav- 
ering steadiness, the unyielding, inflexi- 
ble uprightness of a man of long-tried and 
established virtue, that has been always 
consistent, in constant exercise, and which 
has been worn as a habit, till it has be- 
come, like the countenance or gait, the 
mark by which we recognize the man 
even at a distance ? . And how easily do 
we detect the assumed, the variable and 
faultering character of the man of alternate 
sinning and repenting, of weak resolves 
and frequent relapses, — the character, 
i. e. of one, who too late in the day has 
seen the necessity of habits of sobriety, 
integrity, religious faith, and a heart that 
is right with God ? 

If, then, you who are coming into life 
to fill the places that are now filled by 
your elders w r ould bring with you the 
habits of a religious and virtuous sobriety 
of mind, and would have these marks and 
pledges of a character, fitting you for 



FROM A PASTOR. 237 

earth or heaven, sit easy and natural upon 
you, as much a part of your known and 
conscious individuality, as your personal 
shape and features, begin early the for- 
mation of such a character. Let your 
habitual thoughts and affections, medita- 
tions and prayers, like the stream, wear 
for themselves a deep and undeviating 
channel of religious sobriety, of virtuous 
resolution and active goodness. Begin 
early with remembering your Creator, 
and let a religious sobriety of mind mark 
your opening character, and neither in 
youth, in manhood or old age will you 
forsake God or virtue, nor will God for- 
sake you. 

IV. When I think of the temptations 
that surround you and strongly solicit you 
to swerve from the course that has been 
recommended to you, so many present 
themselves to my view in formidable ar- 
ray, that barely naming them would 
occupy more time than custom or your 



238 A PRESENT 

patience would allow to a single discourse. 
I shall therefore only advert, as I pro- 
posed, and that briefly, to a wide-spread 
and seductive agency, which operates 
with a secret but powerful influence to 
give a bias to the minds of the young the 
reverse of the religious sobriety I would 
recommend. I refer to the reading, or 
current literature of the day, the books 
in fashion and the principles they incul- 
cate. We are become of late years, as 
every one knows, emphatically a reading 
people. From childhood to age, from the 
highest to the lowest condition of life, 
every one reads. Every one is of course 
more or less influenced by what is read. 
The salutary influence of ancient disci- 
pline, before the community became a 
community of readers, — the paramount 
influence of the pulpit as it once was, has 
now yielded to a more sweeping, power- 
ful, and though silent yet irresistible 
influence, that of books, of social or soli- 



FROM A PASTOR. 239 

tary reading. The young are acquiring 
in their silent vigils and by the midnight 
lamp, and in their stealthy hours of lei- 
sure, those impressions, which at their 
time of life have, though a secret, yet a 
mighty efficiency in the formation of 
character. Books that are universally 
read have the power to kill and to make 
alive. To understand this influence, to 
strive to regulate it aright, as it respects 
their children, is one of the most solemn 
duties of intelligent parents, as also of 
instructors of youth and of the ministers 
of religion to the young of their charge. 
There are, together with an ever accu- 
mulating mass of trash, many admirable 
little books, the well-known works of 
several distinguished English female wri- 
ters, and a small number from the pens 
of our own country women of kindred 
genius, that may, not only with safety, 
but with great advantage, be put into the 
hands of children. And for the age of 



240 A PRESENT 

early childhood there is perhaps little 
danger to be apprehended from the del- 
uge of insipid sentimental tales, which of 
late years have inundated the country, — 
much less danger than formerly, when 
the infant mind was misled by monstrous 
and improbable fictions, or abused by 
immoral and seductive stories. 

The danger now is for that period, 
when the glowing intellect and ferment- 
ing passions of youth begin to develop 
together. Since the commencement of 
the present century, a flood of literature 
of a new character, infinitely more seduc- 
tive and imposing than any thing that had 
ever appeared before, and altogether of 
a character with the other novel aspects 
of the age, has been poured in upon the 
reading world, particularly calculated to 
captivate the young. I need not name 
the great and gifted masters of the deep 
and thrilling strains in verse and prose, 
that are every where in the hands of our 



FROM A PASTOR. 241 

reading youth of either sex. My young 
auditors comprehend at once the poets 
and novelists, to whom I refer. I need 
not point to the empassioned, sublime, 
enchanting and prostituted muse of the 
first modern bard, of brief and splendid 
but portentous career, — inculcating, in 
the most beautiful verse, unprincipled 
and reckless licentiousness, misanthropy, 
doubt and despair cast over all the future; 
— nor to the softer strains of another, 
still living, even to gray hairs pouring 
forth entrancing melody and song, while 
he touches unhallowed strings, awakening 
passions, against which innocence and 
virtue and heaven bid the young reso- 
lutely shut the door of their hearts. Nor 
need I refer to the unrivalled creations of 
the late mighty magician of Abbotsford, 
whose hundred volumes are every where 
seen side by side with those of the poetic 
prodigies of the age, together painting 
or singing to the charmed imagination of 
21 



242 A PRESENT 

their readers, with no ray of that pure 
and divine light that was brought down 
from heaven by God's Messiah, with no 
guiding star in the sky, no recognized 
hopes pointing beyond the grave, no mo- 
tives but those drawn from earthly inter- 
ests, from the animal instincts and appe- 
tites, the voluptuous, or dark, but always 
selfish passions, whose objects are pur- 
sued, sometimes with a proud self-glory- 
ing magnanimity, but more often with the 
unrelenting ferocity of a mere brute, 
physical courage, — with no grand moral, 
no pervading sentiment of religion, no 
holy or heavenly principle inculcated or 
illustrated in any prominent narrative or 
character, except in " The heart of Mid- 
lothian," and the Jewess in Ivanhoe. 

" What, then/' you may ask, " while 
these books and kindred works are open 
to all, is to be done ? Shall we interdict 
to the young this fascinating reading 1" 
Not at all. It would be impossible. The 



FROM A PASTOR. 243 

very attempt would only render the books 
in question more alluring. We may in 
vain expect either by authority or man- 
agement, to close the ears of the young 
to these deep-toned and delightful strains. 
Should we wish, if we could, to rest their 
safety in their ignorance of these and sim- 
ilar popular works ? By no means. I 
would inculcate the necessity of carrying 
to this reading soberness of mind. Let the 
young be instructed and made to compre- 
hend distinctly, that there is a right and 
a wrong in things independent of all 
sophistry and the gay rhetoric of wit and 
unbelief. Let them understand that all 
is not wrong, which perverted genius can 
render repulsive or ridiculous, nor all 
right, which poetry can make fascinating 
and delightful. Let them carry these 
seducing pages to the Bible, and measure 
them by the measure of the sanctuary. 
Let them bring to the reading of these 
books minds early imbued with the spirit 



244 A PRESENT 

of our holy religion, home-taught piety, 
high principle, a correct moral taste, and 
then let them read. The bee and the 
spider settle on the same flower. The 
one extracts unmixed sweetness, the other 
unmixed poison, according to the assimi- 
lating powers of each. Let then the 
minds of the young be prepared to ex- 
tract the sweets and to reject the poison 
of the popular works of the age. Let 
them be taught to understand and feel 
that they have serious duties to perform, 
labor and suffering to encounter ; that 
virtue and piety, eternity and heaven are 
realities ; that a pure mind, virtuous 
principles, unspotted manners, religious 
trust and an approving conscience are the 
only unalienable possessions, the only 
goods which an intelligent, immortal and 
accountable being should supremely prize 
and labor incessantly to secure ; — that it 
is dangerous to revel long or frequently 
amidst the enchanting fictions and vision- 



FROM A PASTOR. 245 

ary scenes of the poets and novelists ; — 
that over refinement and softness and 
luxury, — in holier language, the lust of 
the eye, the lust of the flesh and the pride of 
life are not of the Father, hut of the world ; 
and the world passeth away, and the lust 
thereof ; hut he that doeth the will of God, 
and none else, abideth forever. 



21* 



246 



DISCOURSE VIII. 

GOD DESTROYS OUR EARTHLY HOPES TO MAKE US APPRE- 
CIATE THE HOPE AND STRIVE TO LIVE AS BECOMES THE 
HEIRS AND EXPECTANTS OF IMMORTALITY. 

" The stars of heaven are shining on, 

Though these frail eyes are dim with tears ; 
The hopes of earth indeed are gone, 

But are not ours, the immortal years." — J. Roscoe. 

Job. xiv. 19. — Thou destroyest the hope 
of man. 

If we wanted other proofs of the good- 
ness of our Creator than the profusion of 
his bounties, which we see wherever we 
turn our eyes, and of which we partake 
without ceasing, this alone ought to sat- 
isfy us, his having so formed us that the 
kind delusion, hope, attends us through 
all the vicissitudes, all the vanity and 
sore travail of life, nor quits us when we 
die. 



A PRESENT FROM A PASTOR. 247 

Could we ascertain with precision the 
sum of happiness which we have enjoyed 
from the first moment of prospective 
thought to the present hour, and the dif- 
ferent sources from which this happiness 
has arisen, it would appear, I believe, 
that hope has furnished the largest aggre- 
gate in the total amount. In the earlier 
moments of life the promise of a toy, or 
any, the most trifling novelty, is the object 
of desire and expectation ; and the child 
is easily and cheaply blest. In advancing 
years, the object of hope is still in reality 
and truth little better than a bauble or a 
toy. But whatever may be the object, 
disappointment still follows in the foot- 
steps of hope. No earthly acquisition 
ever brought with it all the good which 
it promised at a distance. Yet no num- 
ber of disappointments can bring us ut- 
terly to distrust the sweet flatteries and 
soothing promises of hope. The expected 
felicity to ensue from the termination of 



248 A PRESENT 

some favorite project still furnishes fuel 
to feed the genial flame and to preserve 
from extinction the cheering light of hope. 
Nothing, I repeat, can more strongly 
evince the goodness of our Maker than 
that we are so formed, that although from 
our first acquaintance with life till we quit 
it in death we experience almost an unbro- 
ken succession of disappointments, yet the 
hope of some promised good, some yet 
untasted felicity, buoys up our spirits and 
animates desire and expectation through 
every adversity and change. Whereas, 
if our Maker, instead of giving us this 
propensity to borrow happiness from the 
future, had formed us rigidly to calculate 
what the future would be from what we 
had experienced, we should, before we 
accomplished half the journey of life, 
look only for disaster and disappointment 
on our way, and should perhaps early 
perish the victims of despair. But such 
is the nature God has given us that we 



FROM A PASTOR. 249 

hope and are disappointed, yet we still 
continue to hope. The next day, or 
week, or year, is to bring some acquisi- 
tion, to terminate some enterprize, to 
remove some obstacle, to consummate 
some connection, to make some change 
in our condition, when we are to be hap- 
py. And so it has been with every day, 
every week, every year, that is past. 
And so it is, we are never entirely satis- 
fied with the present, but are always 
looking forward to something future that 
is to content us. 

Think, for one moment, how deplorable 
our condition would have been, if God 
had limited our happiness to the scanty 
sum of enjoyment from the present, with- 
out permitting us to hope for any thing 
better to come here or hereafter. It 
would have been like expunging the 
blessed sun from the firmament of heaven, 
and leaving the world under the perpet- 
ual dominion of polar darkness and frost. 



250 A PRESENT 

But now, formed as we are, and such 
being our condition through the bounty 
of our Creator, we look forward to pros- 
pects gilded and painted bright with the 
rays of the never-setting sun of hope. 
So have we seen in the west a fairy world 
of clouds, diversified with variegated land- 
scapes and all imaginable forms of beauty, 
upon which the descending sun lavishes 
its evening splendors ; and, as they sail 
along in floods of gold, their dark sides 
are gilded with a thousand gorgeous hues. 
The moment the sun is gone, so also is 
their gay and splendid coloring. A dark 
and lurid mass of vapors, instead of the 
bright and painted vision, is all that is 
seen. So it is hope sheds its enchanting 
light upon our distant prospects ; and so 
dark and gloomy would have been our 
earthly sojourn, if God had not ordained 
that hope should gild the path of life, and 
allure the traveler onward by raising 
before him, as he advances, bright and 



FROM A PASTOR. 251 

flattering visions of coming felicity, all of 
her own magic creation and coloring. 
And thus it is, hope leads us patiently 
along over the ruggedest ways, and 
through the darkest scenes of life. As 
soon as one illusion has vanished, instead 
of leaving us long to grieve for our 
disappointment, hope immediately fixes 
our eager eye, even before the tears are 
quite dried out of it, upon some other 
phantom as brilliant and attractive, as the 
one that charmed and cheated us before. 
And, as this disappears, another succeeds, 
and another and another, till desire fails, 
and we quit the illusions of time for the 
realities of eternity. The man who hopes 
for more consequence, or notice in the 
world, looks forward, notwithstanding his 
repeated rebuffs and disappointments, to 
some fortunate contingence, which is to 
confer on him the desired distinction 
and honor. The man, who sets his heart 
upon riches, rises early, goes late to rest, 



252 A PRESENT 

and eats the bread of carefulness, — 
schemes and calculates, and traffics, ex- 
pecting still, however long his hope is 
deferred, that fortune, in some propitious 
hour, will pour her profusion into his 
coffers. The votary of pleasure, not- 
withstanding he has always found pain 
treading on the heel of his licentious 
joys, expects to-morrow to pluck a flower 
without a thorn. Thus it is the breath 
of hope every where animates the busy 
scenes of health, activity and enterprise. 
Even when the darker dispensations of 
providence open upon us, — when the 
illusions of health vanish, and God vis- 
its his frail creature in his eager pursuit 
of the painted shadows, that flit before 
him> with sickness, — hope, when the 
visions appropriate to health can no long- 
er allure, raises a new prospect, and be- 
guiles the hours of confinement and the 
languors of disease with the flattering 
promise of recovery. How much more 



FROM A. PASTOR. 253 

drearily would pass the tedious hours of 
debility, languishment and pain long 
protracted, if God had not made this hope 
of recovery a stronger principle in the 
human constitution, than that of reason. 
You shall go to the sick chamber of one 
whom reason, if left to itself, would surely 
teach, by a thousand instances of the same 
disorder, to abandon all hope of recovery; 
and yet yon will find this hope still glad- 
dens the heart and buoys up the spirits 
of the patient. As the slow and silent 
but irresistible progress of decay beats 
down one fortress after another, hope still 
retreats to some new citadel ; and, it is 
usually the same decisive blow, which 
severs the thread of life, that at last dis- 
pels with it the illusions of hope. It is 
peculiarly so with the young. They can 
hardly bring themselves to believe, to 
realise that they must die, when disease 
in some mild and gentle form has taken 
hold of them, however steadily and firmly 
22 



254 A PRESENT 

it grasps its victims. Hope flatters them 
from day to day, that the relief which 
they have not yet found, will come to- 
morrow ; and, it is not till they have lain 
down upon their bed for the last time, 
and they feel the cold hand of death upon 
them, that they cease to hope. 

But is there no other hope, when that of 
recovery fails ? Yes, — thanks to the Fa- 
ther of our spirits for the unspeakable 
gift, — when the poor, worn out sufferer is 
convinced that the hour of dissolution is 
at hand, there is still another hope, which 
God hath provided in mercy for all, who 
will embrace it through faith in his Son, 
the promise, which he hath promised us by 
him, even, life eternal, — the hope of mak- 
ing a joyful exchange of an earthly, cor- 
ruptible body, for one that is spiritual, 
incorruptible and immortal, — the hope of 
leaving a state of infirmity, sin and sor- 
row, for a better country even an heav- 
enly, where there shall be no more death. 



FROM A PASTOR. 255 

neither sorrow, nor crying, nor any more 
pain, and God shall wipe away all tears. 
This last, this glorious hope of eternal 
life, is the only one that shall not be fol- 
lowed with disappointment, provided we 
early embrace it, and by patient continu- 
ance in well doing steadily aim to live, as 
the author of this hope hath taught us in 
his gospel. Hence we see why it is, that 
the present life is a continued series of 
disappointments — why it is that God so 
often destroys, as it is said in the text, the 
hope of man. 

If God is perfectly good and wise, as 
well as almighty, — and to doubt it were 
as irrational, as it would be impious, — 
and if he had not intended us for anoth- 
er life, a future state of equitable retri- 
bution, he would not have subjected us 
to so many evils, — to so much disap- 
pointment and trouble and sorrow here. 
Every hope, every desire would have 
been gratified with the enjoyment of its 
contemplated object, and the current of 



256 A PRESENT 

life would have flowed on smooth and 
unruffled to the last. We should have 
been satisfied with our lot, and wished for 
nothing more. We should have been 
like the happy animals, and birds of the 
air, content with the present, without 
regret for the past, or apprehension for 
the future. God would never have held 
us in painful bondage through fear of death. 
That event would not have been antici- 
pated, as now, with dread, but would 
have taken place unlooked for and unsus- 
pected by us. And the same moment, 
which saw us fearless and happy, to the 
last 

"Pleased like the lamb that crops the flow'ry food, 
And licks the hand, justrais'd to shed its blood," 

would have put us into non-existence, and 
beyond the reach of pain forever. 

But it is far otherwise with us, and the 
existing constitution of things is altogeth- 
er different. Human life exhibits one 
wide scene of painful regrets and anxious 



FROM A PASTOR. 257 

apprehensions, — full of vanity and vexa- 
tion of spirit. Man, says holy Scripture, 
walketh in a vain show ; he is ever more 
or less disquieted and sad, restless, dis- 
contented, repining, flying from a sense 
of present dissatisfaction, to new schemes 
and experiments, as sure to disappoint 
him, as those he had tried before. Thus 
God destroys the hopes of man in regard to 
the possessions and objects of this world. 
In bringing to pass these repeated dis- 
appointments of our earthly hopes, — some 
of them, God knows, grievous and bitter 
in the extreme, — no instrument in the 
hand of Providence is more efficient than 
the great destroyer, and at the same 
time, great teacher, death. God sends 
this messenger into our dwellings, and 
his coming effectually overthrows to then* 
base the most lofty structures of human 
pride, of human confidence in earthly 
possessions and hopes. When called to 
witness how irretrievably God disappoints 
22* 



258 A PRESENT 

and destroys the hopes of individuals and 
of families by death, — by taking from 
friends the objects most beloved on earth, 
— from parent the desire of their heart 
and the delight of their eyes, — by taking 
away the young, who are the hope of 
society, — we must have contracted a 
strange levity of mind, or moral stupidity, 
if we can see these ravages, and not feel 
impressed and awed, and humbled under 
the mighty hand of God. Lighter than 
vanity itself must be the mind and char- 
acter of those, who can witness the de- 
parture of their companions and equals in 
years, whether cut off suddenly in their 
full strength and vigor, or doomed to 
linger through months of debility, of irk- 
some confinement and slow decay, — who 
can witness the pale countenance, the 
worn out frame — the last convulsive sigh, 
and not be awakened to a serious sense 
of the shortness and uncertainty of life, 
and to a deep and vigilant solicitude so 



FROM A PASTOR. 259 

to live that their last end may be full of 
peace and hope. 

The number of those, who die in child- 
hood and youth, exceeds the number of 
those who survive to years of maturity. 
You have seen a flower, which raised 
its bright form and opening beauties to 
the morning sun. Ere the evening you 
have sought the same flower, and either 
smitten by a worm at the root, or 
plucked by some careless and rude hand, 
you found it had fallen, and its form 
and beauty faded and withered away. 
So have we seen the infant, the child, the 
youth of early promise, full of health and 
animation, growing up in the morning of 
life, the delight and hope of parental af- 
fection and fostering relatives. And, 
while yet the freshness and the dews of the 
morning were upon them, we have seen 
them smitten by a secret blight in their 
prime, droop and sicken and wither, like 
the faded flower, till we have seen them 



260 A. PRESENT 

borne to their long home, and the mourners 
going about the streets .* 

If God thus destroyed the hope of ma?i, 
merely for the purpose of inflicting dis- 
appointment and pain, and for no moral 
and ulterior ends, we might with reason 
complain, and in bitterness of soul call in 
question the mercy and the equity of the 
divine dispensations. But God does this 
for far other purposes — for the wisest and 
most gracious ends. He disappoints our 
earthly hopes, that we may be incited to 
grasp with a firmer hold the hope and 
promise of eternal life. He defeats our 
plans and cuts off our expectations of 
earthly happiness, in order that we may 
feel the necessity of seeking the divine 
favor, as our chief good, and of thus lay- 
ing up treasure and placing our hopes in 
a world, where there are no such changes 
as are here. 



* Preached the Sabhath after the interment of a child am! 
young man of extraordinary beauty and promise. 



FROM A PASTOR. 261 

If God were not thus severely kind, — 
if he were to gratify all our wishes 
here, how soon should we contract an 
invincible attachment to this world ? 
How soon would the thought that we 
must leave it at last render us completely 
wretched, whenever it crossed our mind ? 
As it is, we in general, when summoned 
to leave the world, discover sufficient 
reluctance to depart, disappointed, har- 
rassed, and wearied, as most of us are, 
that live many years in this scene of dis- 
cipline and sore travail which God has 
given the sons of men to be exercised there- 
with. If even now we are so reluctant 
to depart at the summons of our Maker, 
how much greater would be our reluct- 
ance, did we find nothing here to vex, 
to disappoint, to afflict, to tire us out and 
make us long for rest. As things are 
now arranged by the providence of God, 
with what different sensations do different 
classes of men receive the unwelcome 
messenger, that comes to all ? He, who 



262 A PRESENT 

leaves great possessions, a palace, a 
crowd of dependents and flatterers, and 
all the accumulated goods of life, for a 
narrow and cheerless lodging in the 
grave, departs, — unless he has learned, 
as a disciple of the Son of God; to pos- 
sess all these things, as though he pos- 
sessed them not, — departs, I say, with 
feelings of reluctance, and regret, very 
different from those of the poor and worn 
out laboring man, or homeless wanderer, 
who has nothing to attach him to life, — 
nothing to quit but toil, and it may be, a 
few humble, but kind friends, who will 
soon follow him, — who has no goods laid 
up for many years, nothing to make him 
" cast one longing, lingering look be- 
hind/ ' no incumbrance, in short, to 
throw off but his enfeebled body, and 
like a tired man, to repose from labor 
and sorrow in that quiet bourne, where 
the wicked cease from troubling, and the 
weary are at rest. 

Nothing, we should constantly remem- 



FROM A PASTOR. 263 

ber, is ultimate in this world,— all is 
probationary, — all is preparatory and has 
reference to another and unseen retribu- 
tive state. Our whole course here is a 
school of discipline and trial. Disap- 
pointments and sorrows, loss of friends, 
sickness and pain soon overtake us,- — 
often in the early morning of life, in or- 
der to teach us from the first that here is 
not our rest, — that this world is not our 
home. A wise and benignant Provi- 
dence early begins the process, which is 
intended to prevent or cure us of an un- 
due attachment to life, or an unreason- 
able reluctance to quit the body, to be 
present with the Lord. This process 
God steadily pursues. Our sweetest 
hopes disappointed, favorite plans of 
happiness defeated, high raised expecta- 
tions overthrown, fond affections crossed, 
early commence our weaning from this 
world, and teach us, as we count and 
sigh over our withered joys and vanished 



264 A PRESENT 

prospects, if we would find permanent 
satisfaction and peace, — if we would pos- 
sess something, which can not disappoint 
us, we must not look for it here in out- 
ward things, but by piety and virtue, by 
conformity to the laws of our being, 
must prepare ourselves to find it in a 
better life to come. 

From this frequent frustration of our 
earthly hopes, from the insufficiency, 
which we find, in the goods of this 
world to satisfy the cravings of the illim- 
itable mind, — from the consequent dis- 
satisfaction which pursues us to the close 
of life, and from the known goodness of 
the Creator, reason alone should teach 
us, and has taught mankind in every age, 
to infer that another life awaits us be 
yond the grave. In the animal creation 
God has provided for every thing that 
lives and moves, an adequate gratifica 
tion of every natural desire, — something 
suited and corresponding to all its wants. 



FROM A PASTOR. 265 

We, the only race of creatures on earth 
endowed with a rational and moral na- 
ture, and destined to immortality, were 
not intended to find all that we covet in 
this world. We eagerly thirst and sigh 
for permanent and complete happiness, 
and we feel ourselves incited by the 
promptings of all the higher principles of 
our nature to be making continual pro- 
gress towards the attainment of this hap- 
piness. But as our animal nature strongly 
tends to attach us exclusively to the 
things that are seen and temporal, to the 
country, in which we are only strangers 
and sojourners for a season, God sees it 
necessary oftentimes to disappoint and 
afflict us, — to take away the desire of our 
heart, and the delight of our eyes with a 
stroke, in order to set us right, to loosen 
our attachment to what is frail and per- 
ishable, and to fix our affections upon 
the things unseen and eternal, the things 
above, where Christ, as our forerunner, 
23 



266 A PRESENT 

hath set down at the right hand of God. 
For this exalted and gracious end every 
affliction, which we do not by our own 
sins and follies bring upon ourselves, is 
sent by God. And even those distresses 
which we bring upon ourselves by our 
sins and follies, take place by the benev- 
olent appointment of God, i. e. are con- 
sequences which he has ordained should 
ensue, in order to wean us from folly and 
sin. Are we visited with sickness ? It 
is to teach us not to set too high a value 
upon pleasures, which depend upon our 
animal nature, and which we can enjoy 
only in these frail and perishable bodies. 
Do we eagerly covet some desired ob- 
ject, which we imagine would content us 
if obtained, — and is it denied us? Or, if 
obtained, does it disappoint us ; — or is it 
taken from us ? All this is but the disci- 
pline of our wise and gracious Father in 
heaven, to teach us that our chief good, 
the true end of our being, is not to be 



FROM A PASTOR. 267 

found in outward possessions, in the 
world, or the world's pleasures. Are we 
bereaved of the objects most dear to us, 
the children of our love, in whom our 
heart was bound up, — or the friend that 
was as our own soul 1 Perhaps no other 
event could so effectually set home upon 
our mind and heart the divine admonition, 
Trust not in man that must die, nor in the 
son of man, whose breath is in his nostrils; 
who is as grass, and all his glory as the 
flower of grass. The grass wither eth, and 
the flower thereof falleth away. And wilt 
thou set thy heart, says the prophet, upon 
that which is not ? Make the everlasting 
God thy trust, and hope continually in 
him, in whose favor is life, and whose 
loving kindness is better than life. 

Are you a mourner, my hearer ; and do 
you say with the prophet, " Is there sor- 
row like unto my sorrow ? I have seen the 
ruin of my dearest earthly hopes. The 
child of my affections, on which my fond- 



268 A PRESENT 

est expectations rested, is taken away, 
the prop, on which I had hoped to have 
leaned in my age, is removed forever." 
But there is a voice which says to you, 
as to the widow of Nain, and to Jairus, 
who were bereaved of their children, 
Weep not, for thy child is not dead, but 
sleepeth. And it sleeps only to you, — to 
us in the body ; for it is awake and lives 
to God, as all the departed are alive to 
him, — are, i e. living conscious spirits in 
a spiritual world. For he is not, says our 
Lord, a God of the dead, but of the living; 
for all live unto him. 

And who, if he knew his true interest, 
would repine, that at the heaviest ex- 
pense, and with a stroke ever so severe,* 
God should strike away those props, 
which tempt us to lean exclusively upon 
the frail foundations of this world? Who 
would wish to be encouraged to build his 
house upon a basis of sand ? Be in- 
structed therefore, by the instability and 



FROM A PASTOR. 269 

uncertain duration of all earthly possess- 
ions, to seek a surer basis on which to 
rear the structure of your hopes. Build 
it on the Rock of ages, — on the truth, 
the love, the promise of the everlasting 
God ; and though the winds and the 
rain, and the floods of earthly calamity 
and sorrow assail it, yet shall it stand, 
even when to you the earth is no more, 
and you shall dwell securely in it during 
the interminable ages of eternity. 

God is the unfailing friend of all those 
who offer the sacrifices of righteousness, 
and put their trust in him. And who are 
strong, — who are safe, — who are tran- 
quil in all vicissitudes, — but they who 
have thus chosen and secured for their 
patron and protector the Almighty, and 
ever present God ? Acquaint thyself, 
therefore, with God ; and in the day of 
trouble be at peace. Trust in him, and 
he shall cause thee to know that it is 
with a father's love, a father's solicitude 
23* 



270 A PRESENT FROM A. PASTOR. 

for the moral, spiritual, immortal welfare 
of his children, that he afflicts, — that it is 
in mercy he destroys the hope of man. 



271 



DISCOURSE IX. 

THE VOICE OF NATURE IN AUTUMN.* 

Psalm 49 : 14. — And their beauty shall 
consume in the grave. 

It is in unison with the voice of the 
season and the event of the last week, 
deplored by us all, to call to our remem- 
brance the most serious and affecting of all 
subjects, thefrailty of man, his transient 
continuance here and the certainty of his 
destination to the grave. It is especially in 
harmony with the fading aspect of nature 
and the mournful images of decay, which 
meet our eyes on every side when we 
look abroad upon the autumnal land- 
scape, and which seem to call upon man 
to reflect, soberly to meditate upon the 
event, which is the end of all flesh ; — to 



* Preached the Sabbath after the sudden death of a 
woman of great beauty and accomplishments. 



272 A PRESENT 

behold in the dying year an emblem of 
that change, which is to divest each one 
of us of the body, to convert " this sen- 
sible warm motion into a kneaded clod," 
and to dismiss the undying spirit to God 
who gave it. 

Were we not all deeply and equally 
interested in this subject, a frequent re- 
currence to it, merely to produce effect, 
and, as the aim sometimes seems to be, 
only to show the power of the preacher 
to impress his hearers with awe and so- 
lemnity by holding up to their contem- 
plation this dark, mysterious and inscru- 
table change, were, to say the least, a 
useless, if not a cruel trifling with their 
feelings ; and to do this often, even with 
the intrinsic interest, with which the sub- 
ject of human frailty and mortality must 
soon or late, come home to every mind 
that thinks and every heart that feels, 
could not fail, by rendering it trite and 
familiar, to weaken its impression and 
impair its effect, when presented. 



FROM A PASTOR. 273 

As death is an event certain and in- 
evitable, and may be near to some that 
are young, as well as to the aged, who 
know that they have not long to live ; as 
it is a theme fitted to awaken a'religious 
awe in the most presumptuous and dar- 
ing, to inspire the most gay and frivolous 
with seriousness, and the most thought- 
less with consideration ; as it is impossi- 
ble not to wish and intend to live well, 
while under the solemn impression that 
we must die and go to give account of 
ourselves to God ; and as, the deep 
and abiding remembrance of this can 
hardly fail to exert a powerful and salu- 
tary influence upon the views, the pur- 
poses and conduct, in life, wisdom has 
been defined by certain philosophers to 
be " meditation upon death. "* 

There is a well known order of monks, 
celebrated for the extreme rigor of 
their vows, who, dressed in sackcloth, 



* See Degerando on Self-Education, p. 422. 
translation. 



274 A PRESENT 

dig their own graves which are never a 
day out of their sight ; who perform all 
their labors in silence, in short, all the 
offices of life ; or, if they speak, when 
they meet, all they say to each other is, 
" Brother, we must die." This is cer- 
tainly a departure from the path, which 
Providence has marked out for man. 
For although life is designed to be a con- 
stant progressive preparation for death 
and a retributive eternity, still it is to be 
life, while it lasts, and not an anticipated 
and continual death. To have death al- 
ways before us, always in our thoughts, 
would destroy or impair some of the 
most useful and necessary feelings and 
affections of our nature, — and unfit us 
for the ordinary and indispensable occu- 
pations of life, which are among the es- 
sential duties and virtues of our present 
state. It would render us indifferent to 
the claims, which society has upon us, 
and would dissolve the charm of those 
tender ties and dear affinities of na- 



FROM A PASTOR. 275 

ture, " which make it life to live." 
Therefore it is, that God has concealed 
from all the precise moment or day of 
their death, while he has surrounded us 
with innumerable memorials and warn- 
ings of the coming of this certain event 
at last. While, then, in [truer accord- 
ance, as we think, with the design of 
Providence, we adopt the motto of a 
more rational philosophy, " The wise 
man, looking forward to death, makes the 
best use of life,'' let us, with this view, 
adjusting the tone of our feelings to the 
farewell song of the birds, to the falling 
of the yellow leaf, to the solemn prelude 
to the requiem of the departed year, — ■ 
let us devote a few moments, this even- 
ing, to reflections upon our last end, — 
upon the certainty that we must all go 
the way whence there is no return ; that 
we must put off these houses of clay, 
and appear naked, disembodied spirits, 
stripped of all outward distinctions, of 



276 A PRESENT 

every disguise, in our true character be- 
fore God. 

Almost the first lesson, which nature 
teaches us, is, that man, whose breath 
is in his nostrils, is born to die. If 
we look upon the open volume, spread 
out before us in the visible creation, we 
see the sentence of decay and dissolu- 
tion inscribed upon all its productions. 
One while we see the earth clothed with 
the young and smiling verdure, — with 
innumerable tribes of flowers and blos- 
soms breathing oclors, — with life and 
beauty in ten thousand forms. After a 
few months the whole perishes, and the 
face of nature is overspread with the fad- 
ing and sallow hues of decay and death. 
The trees, which, not long since, we be- 
held waving their green foliage and ex- 
panding blossoms to the vernal breeze, 
have dropped their matured fruits, and 
are beginning to be stripped of their fad- 
ed honors, and to stand naked and leaf- 
less, like bereaved parents, mourning 



FROM A PASTOR. 277 

over their .fallen and perished offspring. 
The flower, still more frail, that opened 
its beauty to the morning sun, and exhal- 
ed its fragrance to the gentle winds, has 
long since lost its form and comeliness, 
withered and died, like the infant in 
the prime " and beauty of its innocent 
age cut off." 

Not only the productions of nature, 
but the labors of man, the monuments 
of art and the artizan himself grow 
old, and in a little time are no more. 
The hand, that planted the tree, 
that is now decaying, and that rear- 
ed the building that is now falling to 
ruins, has long since mouldered into 
common dust. The man has rested from 
his labors, and his works are following 
him. Thus we can scarcely look upon 
any object, — upon the smallest space in 
nature, without encountering the silent, 
but impressive and solemn admonition, 
that man and his works are destined to 
24 



278 A PRESENT 

certain and speedy decay and dissolution. 
The same lesson, as I have said, is re- 
peated to us alike by the productions of 
nature and those of art ; and our funeral 
knell is tolled in our ears by all the 
countless memorials of the past, — by all 
the once moving forms of life, that have 
vanished, — by all the once breathing 
creatures, that have died, — by all things 
wrought into shape by human hands, that 
have been resolved again into their orig- 
inal elements. 

In the old world, where once were 
cities crowded with an immense popula- 
tion, — rich in splendor and magnificence, 
whose towers and battlements proudly 
defied the assaults of armies, — nothing 
now remains but desolation and ruins. 
We read in holy scripture the names, 
but cannot now ascertain even the sites, 
of Babylon, Ninevah, Tyre, and other 
once flourishing capitals of vast and for- 
midable empires. We read, in the same 
book, of nations, once powerful and eel- 



FROM A PASTOR. 279 

ebrated, who have left no other trace of 
their existence than the brief notice pre- 
served in these ancient records. They, 
too, had, no doubt, their cities, like the 
rest, that rung with the din of industry, 
and with the notes of gayety and joy, and 
whose superb dwellings were endeared 
to their happy tenants by the same do- 
mestic affections and pleasures, which 
make home so delightful to you, who 
hear me. Ages, in slow and solemn 
procession, have passed away since these 
nations, their cities, and palaces and 
their tenants have been involved in one 
common ruin and oblivion. Where once 
the hearts of millions beat high with 
joy, — where, grouped in smiling families, 
the busy generation exulted in the sweet 
consciousness of existence,-buoyant with 
hope, — calculating upon many years to 
come, — seeking after wealth, pleasure, 
honor and a name to live after them, — 
there the solitary owl now tunes her 



280 A PRESENT 

nocturnal notes to the melancholy ca- 
dence of the winds. The whole scene 
is a solitude and a desolation. But in 
the ear of reflection the solemn admo- 
nition issues from these ruins, " Soon, 
man, wherever, or whoever thou art, 
shall the places that have known thee, 
know thee no more forever !" — Thus 
every work of man passeth away, and 
man himself is more frail, more perish- 
able and transient than even many of 
the productions of his own hands. — 
While in books we trace the records of 
history, the thoughts and deeds of men, 
we are taught the same lesson. We 
read of kings and their reigns, of heroes 
and their exploits, — of statesmen and 
their intrigues, — of wars and conquests, 
— of revolutions and splended achieve- 
ments of nations. Interested, and borne 
along with the narrative by the princi- 
ple of sympathy in our nature, we see, 
while we read, the actors and the events 



FROM A PASTOR. 281 

almost passing before our eyes. But 
when we close the book, and inquire, 
where are they now 1 they are all gone, 
and given place to new actors, or to va- 
cancy. They, who once figured and 
made a noise upon the stage of life, and 
acted such distinguished parts, are all 
numbered with the things that were, but 
are not. Wherever there has been life, 
there also has been death. Whatever 
has been, or shall be reared from the bo- 
som of earth, our common mother, has 
been or will be returned to her bosom 
again. 

Our fathers, the friends we have 
known and loved, — where are they ? If 
we look around in the circle of those, 
whose faces and the tones of whose 
voice were once familiar and dear to us, 
how many do we miss ? One after 
another has dropped almost impercepti- 
bly into the grave. We scarcely thought 
how many, and how fast they were going, 
24* 



282 A PRESENT 

as they successively departed ; but when 
we pause to reckon up the number, and 
count the places of those, that are gone, 
we are struck with the ravages, that 
death has made, and wonder how we 
could be so little impressed by the 
events, as they passed, so momentous to 
the departed, — so admonitory to the liv- 
ing. 

What, at best, is human life, — this 
bounded and variously measured period 
of our being, — in which, those, who at- 
tain to manhood, are so full of schemes 
and projects, hopes and fears, — so aspir- 
ing, and so disquieted, if they cannot 
compass the objects of their aspirings, — 
if they cannot be rich, distinguished or 
admired, during the few uncertain and 
vanishing years allotted them ? The 
longest life is but threescore years and 
ten, — or in a privileged few (if indeed it 
be a privilege) eked out by extraordina- 
ry vigor to a score or more beyond. 
. The happiest life is but a succession of 



FROM A PASTOR. 283 

labors and transient joys, of ardent 
hopes, often blasted, and when possessed, 
seldom fulfilling half their promise, — its 
best days marred with trouble and anx- 
iety, and ending in infirmity and pain. 
Few comparatively reach the goal of 
three score years and ten. A much 
greater number seem born only to make 
their appearance for a day, like the flow- 
er, that blooms with the dawn, — looks up- 
on the light, and dies. It is astonishing 
what multitudes close their career, al- 
most as soon as begun. The advancing 
ranks grow thinner, as they approach the 
limits of human existence. A very few 
attain to what seems to be the natural 
wish of almost every human heart. They 
live to old age. In other words, they 
outlive their friends and associates, who 
began the journey of life with them. 
They outlive the manners, those modes 
of thinking, of speech and action, which 
are alone pleasing to them. They out- 
live most of their senses, and often their 



284 A PRESENT 

reason and memory, and, with a few fa- 
vored exceptions, with little to enjoy or 
hope, more than to see with dim eyes, 
the sun rise and set a few times more. 
In view of all the ills and infirmities, 
which so often render even the strength 
of the aged, in the affecting language of 
scripture, labor and sorroiv, we are ready 
to adopt the sentiment of the father of 
history, " whom the Gods love die 
young." 

Yet, in an existence such as is al- 
lotted us here, so short at the best, so un- 
certain, that we can none of us be sure 
of to-morrow, and sent here, as we are, 
for the great and momentous purpose of 
forming a character, that shall fit us for 
another, spiritual and eternal world, how 
many, nevertheless, who survive the pe- 
riod of childhood, find time to sin, to 
taint the soul with corrupting pleasures, 
to forget, or to trifle w T ith the high and 
solemn trust committed to them, that of 
securing with a diligent and virtuous use 



FROM A PASTOR. 285 

of their time and opportunities, not only 
their present peace and welfare, but 
the final approbation of their Maker, 
who placed them here, and has assur- 
ed every one, that as he sows here, 
so also shall he reap in eternity. 
The consideration therefore of our frail- 
ty, — the certainty that we must die and 
it may be soon and suddenly, ought surely 
to make and keep us sober, thoughtful, 
humble and assiduous in doing the work 
God has given us to do, while the day of 
life and strength is continued to us, mind- 
ful that the night of death may be near, 
when no man can work. It ought to 
reduce in us all vain and useless aspirings 
of pride and vanity — to humble our lofty 
aims and hopes, — or rather to exalt them 
from earth to heaven. 

To that class of my hearers, upon 
whom the infection of vanity, of a 
proud and presumptuous confidence in 
life, is most apt to fasten, the text 
speaks with a prophetic and monitory 



286 A PRESENT 

voice, which has been verified in every 
passing age, in every circling year, in 
every village and neighborhood by the 
death of the hale, the young and the 
beautiful. To this class, who are buoy- 
ant with hope, — dreaming bright dreams 
of the future, — beguiling themselves with 
a thousand flattering visions of many and 
happy years to come, the text utters its 
warning voice. These "gay dreamers 
of gay dreams" have not yet learned 
what life is ; — they have yet felt no ebb- 
ings in the full and warm tide of existence 
to remind them of their frailt} T ; — and the 
instances, they may have witnessed, of 
their companions and equals in years cut 
down in life's green spring, and their pale 
cold forms in their faded beauty borne 
away to wither and consume in the grave, 
have been few and far between, and have 
soon ceased to impress and admonish 
them. It is the young, therefore, that 
most need to have the admonition repeat- 



FROM A PASTOR. 287 

ed to them, from the lips of friendly mon- 
itors and from the word of God, that has 
appropriate counsels for all, — the admo- 
nition to remember their frailty, and that 
they too may be called away in an hour, 
when they think not, and their body in 
its freshness and beauty be made a prey 
to death to consume in the grave. 

There is one source of vanity in youth, 
of which sickness and death seem some- 
times to be sent in mockery, as if to in- 
struct survivors how precarious and tran- 
sient a possession they are proud of, — 
as if to bring derision upon one of the 
most flattering, most coveted, and often, 
God knows, most fatal gifts conferred 
upon youth, that of personal beauty. 
Here, if we may credit the poet of 
" Paradise Lost," was the weak part, the 
assailable point of our common mother. 
Her daughters, with few exceptions, and 
some of her sons of almost questionable 
sex, have inherited this infirmity. Hence 



288 A PRESENT 

that solicitude about dress, so dispropor- 
tioned to their concern about better 
things ; — that absorbing attention to the 
outward adorning of the person, for which 
the apostle exhorts the women of his time 
to substitute the imperishable ornaments 
of the mind and heart, — the improvement 
of their rational nature, — the interior 
graces of a meek and quiet spirit, which in 
the sight of God are of great price. It is 
this solicitude to make the most of those 
outward attractions, which nature has 
given, that employs so much of the time 
and thoughts of the young in studying to 
embellish a form and structure, which the 
Creator has made beautiful, but which 
fashion not seldom changes to deformity, 
which the flight of years will certainly 
rob of its charms, — which casuafty or 
disease may suddenly reduce to undistin- 
guishable dust. There are few traits in 
human nature, that furnish more humil- 
iating proof of its vanity and weakness 



FROM A PASTOR. 289 

than the discovery how much this regard 
to external appearance occupies the at- 
tention of every age and sex. You shall 
often find this regard to have gained such 
powerful ascendency over the mind, that 
you would give far less offence by charg- 
ing the individual with immorality, than 
by intimating that you thought the 
person, the exterior figure and ap- 
pearance unpleasing, or wanting in at- 
traction and grace. So wrong-headed 
and perverse are we in our estimate of 
things, that we can bear to hear our dis- 
positions, our morals even, taxed with 
obliquities and defects, while we resent 
the slightest hint of deficiency in our un- 
derstanding or person. Yet what can 
be more absurd ? For, is not the under- 
standing and person of every one fash- 
ioned and dealt to each, as God has been 
pleased ? Whereas, the dispositions, the 
moral character and conduct are of every 
one's own making and fashioning. We 
25 



290 A PRESENT 

are mortified and repine at defects, 
which we could neither prevent nor rem- 
edy, and are content, nay elated, with 
qualities of our own creating, of which 
we have cause to be ashamed before God 
and man. 

To those, who think more of those 
outward adornings, which add nothing 
to the intrinsic worth of the subject, 
than of those imperishable graces of the 
mind and heart, which look fair to heav- 
en, which make the soul dear to God, — 
no reflection, one would think, could be 
more salutary, than that their beauty must 
at last, and may soon be consigned to 
dust and consume in the grave. Its lan- 
guage is, " make not an idol of the form 
and comeliness, which thy Creator has 
given thee ; — let not its outward 
adornings engross the time and atten- 
tion, that should be given to the cul- 
ture and improvement of the undying 
spirit that animates it, to the duties 
and employments, that must prepare 



FROM A PASTOR. 291 

it for meeting its Maker and Judge in 
peace. Sickness and decay will ere 
long lay their withering hand upon thy 
frame and thy beauty shall consume in 
the grave." 

Although to a certain extent, attention 
to personal appearance is innocent and 
proper, nay, a duty in all, which, how- 
ever, must be determined by the circum- 
stances of rank, wealth, or occupation of 
each individual ; yet when it takes off 
the mimd from more important pursuits, 
— diverts the thoughts from those moral 
and spiritual concerns, upon which are 
suspended the soul's everlasting peace 
and welfare, — when it excludes from the 
mind all serious and becoming solicitude 
to be prepared for that event, which 
must come to all, — it then becomes fool- 
ish and sinful, just as every other inordi- 
nate affection, or engrossing interest 
does, which produces a similar effect. 

But although all outward distinctions, 



292 A PRESENT 

whether of beauty, genius, wealth, or 
rank, cease with life, 

" When man's frail frame returns to whence it rose, 
And mourn'd and mourner lie united in repose," 

and thus, by their brief duration, prove 
to us of how little consequence they 
are, — yet, blessed be God, who hath 
given us the assurance by the resurrec- 
tion of his son from the dead, there are 
distinctions, qualities inherent in the 
soul, that remain forever. While beauty 
consumes in the grave, — while the most 
admired symmetry of form, and the most 
perfect assemblage of outward attractions 
shall cease to be distinguishable from 
common dust, — while it will soon be of 
no importance who were the great or the 
little among men, — or who were the 
beautiful, or otherwise among women, — 
the qualities of the mind and heart, — the 
distinctions of piety and goodness, — the 
love of God and virtue, — a character 
modeled after that of the Saviour, — the 



FROM A PASTOR. 293 

moral graces of faith, humility, meek- 
ness, patience, charity, purity, — a for- 
giving, gentle and benevolent spirit, — in 
a word, the christian temper and char- 
acter will survive the ruins of the grave, 
— will survive all the vain and coveted 
distinctions of earth, even the dissolution 
of the earth itself, and the vanishing of 
these visible heavens. These are im- 
perishable goods, the only treasures we 
can take with us when we die ; death 
can not despoil us of these ; and it is the 
possession of these that makes the poor 
rich, — rich towards God,— rich for eter- 
nity. 

To have remembered and obeyed our 
Creator in the days of our youth, — to 
have formed an early acquaintance with 
the sacred Scriptures, which are able to 
make us wise unto salvation, through the 
faith which is by Christ Jesus, — to have 
been dutiful, grateful, and obedient to our 
parents, kind and affectionate to brothers 
25* 



294 A PRESENT 

and sisters in our youth, if our youth 
were blest with these relatives, — to have 
been friendly, courteous and obliging in 
all our intercourse with our associates 
and equals in years, and in all our trans- 
actions with men ; to have been indus- 
trious, and useful in the station in which 
Providence has placed us ; to have learn- 
ed from the teachings and example of 
Jesus how to live and how to die, and to 
have aimed in humble and devout reli- 
ance upon God's help to reduce to prac- 
tice what we have learned, and to adorn 
the doctrine of our Saviour by a life con- 
formed to the plain rules of duty in the 
New Testament, — to have done these 
things, and to possess such a character, 
as the doing of these things implies, is 
infinitely better than to have been dis- 
tinguished among the celebrated for ge- 
nius, or rank, or wealth, or beauty, or 
fashion, or any or all endowments or 
possessions, which we must leave when 



FROM A PASTOR. 295 

our body returns to the dust, and our 
spirit to God who gave it. To have done 
these things according to the measure of 
our capacity and opportunities, and the 
number of our days, is to have answered 
the ends of our existence in time, and to 
have secured that good part, which shall 
not be taken away from us. 



296 EXTRACT. 

" Col. Pickering was in the continen- 
tal army through the war; and was some- 
time Adjutant General and Quarter 
Master General of that Army. Under 
the federal government, he was one 
while Post Master General; — then Sec- 
retary of War, — then Secretary of State 
of the United States. He was afterwards 
a Pvepresentative and a Senator in Con- 
gress. For two or three years he was a 
member of the Supreme Executive ot 
Massachusetts. Few men were so much 
in the public service as Col. Pickering. — 
From 1774 to 1820, there were but few 
years when he was not in some important 
office. He died poor, but with an hon- 
orable fame, as a true patriot and an in- 
corruptible public officer. He had habits 
of great industry, and often labored on 
his farm several hours in the day after he 
was seventy-five. Mr. Pickering died 
in 1829, at the age of eighty-three/' — 
[Dr. Bradford's Biographical Notices of 
Distinguished Men in New England. 



297 



DISCOURSE X. 

TIMOTHY PICKERING, 

" The Secretary stood alone. Modern degeneracy had not 
reached him." 

Deuteronomy, xxxiv : 7. His eye was 
not dim, nor his natural force abated. 

Standing here for the first time since 
the decease of the distinguished servant 
of his country, and his God, who for 
many years was a constant worshiper in 
this house, I hope it will not. be deemed 
unseasonable or obtrusive, if, waiving the 
topics ordinarily selected for the theme 
of discourse on occasions like the pres- 
ent,* I indulge myself in the grateful, 

* The Stale Fast. 



298 A PRESENT 

though mournful satisfaction of recalling 
to remembrance some of the prominent 
and distinctive excellencies of that great 
and good man, and in giving utterance to 
some of the exulting recollections, patri- 
otic sentiments and cheering anticipa- 
tions associated with the history and name 
of him, whom, while living, we all de- 
lighted to honor, and whose memory, now 
that he has gone, we love to cherish and 
can never cease to revere. 

We come here at all times to contem- 
plate and admire together the perfections 
of the Divinity, as manifested in his works, 
in the wonderful operations and gifts ofj 
his providence and to meditate upon our de- 
pendence and obligations, as his creatures. 
It cannot therefore be out of place in this 
house and on this day, dedicated to relig- 
ious consideration and serious reflection 
upon our individual, social and civil rela- 
tions and duties, to recognize the most 
glorious display of the divine attributes, 



FROM A PASTOR. 299 

as exhibited in the human mind, when 
pre-eminently endowed with wisdom and 
virtue, — that mind, which the Creator has 
made to be an image of his own eternity, and 
which, when showing forth its brightness 
and its strength and its purity in the use- 
ful, honorable, active and prolonged life 
of an able public servant and an honest 
man, is justly regarded, as "the noblest 
work of God." 

When a child my father taught me to 
honor and revere the men, who planned 
and achieved the independence of our 
country ; and among the first names of 
New England worthies, I learned to rev- 
erence that of Colonel Pickering. I had 
figured to myself as embodied in him, all 
the stern and unbending virtues of a Ro- 
man citizen in Rome's best days, when I 
knew him only by reputation, and by his 
public acts and writings. When it was 
my better fortune to know him, as he 
appeared in the free and unrestrained 



300 A PRESENT 

intercourse of social and domestic life, it 
was delightful to find the softenings of 
benevolence and the attractions of cheer- 
ful and affectionate manners shedding a 
mild and mellow lustre over the severer 
features of the image, I had formed to 
myself of the intrepid soldier and inflexi- 
ble senator. 

Little worthy of the subject, as I am 
sensible, must be any tribute, that I can 
offer to the memory of the venerated sage 
and patriot, and justly and eloquently, as 
his character has been already depicted 
by the faithful and appropriate organ* of 
your veneration and regrets, I am never- 
theless impelled to express my sense of 
the rare virtues and worth of the man, 
from a deep feeling of what I owe to his 
public services in common with the whole 
American people, and still more from a 
grateful recollection of the many happy 



* Rev. C. W. Upham, Pastor of the Church in which Colonel 
Pickering worshiped. 



FROM A PASTOR. 301 

and improving hours I have enjoyed, in 
common with others who hear me, in lis- 
tening to the wise, instructive and enter- 
taining discourse of the faithful chronicler, 
familiar companion and friend. If men, who 
have been traffickers in flattery through 
life, find flatterers to eulogize them after 
they are dead, it is surely meet that the 
venerable old man, who spoke only the 
truth in his life, should find many who 
will delight to pronounce his eulogy by 
speaking only truth of him, now he is 
gone. 

Col. Pickering belonged to a race of 
remarkable men, formed by the peculiar 
circumstances of the age, in which they 
entered upon the scenes of active life. 
Comparing the present generation of 
statesmen, politicians and patriots, — if 
we ought to use the word, since the 
meaning is so changed, — with the public 
men of that period, we may well say in 
view of our political degeneracy, in those 
26 



302 A PRESENT 

days there were giants in the land. When 
we recollect in what a mighty and peril- 
ous enterprize they engaged, and with 
what means they accomplished so great a 
work, we may say of every one of the 
master spirits, who conducted that enter- 
prize in the senate and in the field, with . 
more truth than the men from whom we 
borrow the expression, thou wast worth 
ten thousand of us. 

It is great occasions, that make great 
men. And such was the era of the 
American revolution. It is in such 
awakening emergencies, in such spirit 
stirring times, that in all countries and 
in all periods of history, men spring up 
and are brought into notice, and often- 
times from the undistinguished mass of 
the people, who, but for these extraordi- 
nary emergencies would have held on the 
equal tenor of their way undistinguished 
and unknown, — men, formed and fitted for 
instruments to accomplish the divine pur- 



FROM A PASTOR. 303 

poses in bringing 1m pass important chan- 
ges and revolutions, which lay anew the 
foundations of society, and re-model the 
institutions of a nation, — men, endowed 
with qualities, that fit them to guide the 
whirlwind and direct the storm of revo- 
lution, — men, who act as efficient levers, 
by which the ancient systems of igno- 
rance, superstition, and oppression are 
overturned to be replaced by a better 
order of things. 

And let us remark here, that this 
view of the acting of providence, not 
only shows how admirably divine wis- 
dom adapts means to ends, but it teaches 
us respect for our race, — teaches us 
that talents, and intelligence and high 
powers and gifted minds are not confined 
to a class, to a walk, to the upper sphere. 
It shows us that the distributions of prov- 
idence are dealt out with an impartial 
hand, — that, as the poet has so beautifully 
said of gems, that sparkle in the unfath- 
omed depths of ocean, and roses that 



304 A PRESENT 

blush unseen in the*desert, there are 
powerful and gifted minds, that never 
scintillate or glow in the view of their 
fellow-men, until what we erroneously 
call chance, or circumstances bring them 
forth to burn and shine, to enlighten and 
to bless in the view of their admiring co- 
temporaries and oft-times to make their 
influence felt, and their deeds to be re- 
membered by all future generations. 

The infancy of Col. Pickering and his 
compeers of the revolution was rocked, if I 
may so speak, in the cradle of indepen- 
dence. While he was a child and till he 
became a man to take part in them, discus- 
sions respecting the rights and the duties 
of the colonies, and those of the crown and 
parliament were warmly agitated. The 
chains, that the parent country had long 
suffered to sit lightly upon these remote 
subjects of the crown, began to be felt as 
an unnecessary and galling burden by the 
wearers. The foolish and wicked attempt 
of parliament to rivet them by taxation 



FROM A PASTOR. 305 

was the signal for throwing them off. 
The people, who had worn them loyally 
almost without perceiving it, the instant 
the claim was set up to assess their prop- 
erty without their consent, felt the iron 
enter into their soul. The claims of 
prescription, of divine right and heredi- 
tary power, that had been acquiesced in, 
unquestioned for ages, were thoroughly 
examined and understood, and the war- 
rant of the claimants to enforce them was 
contested. 

This was just the contest to rouse the 
spirit of independence in such minds as 
those of Col. Pickering and the men 
with whom he acted, and to call forth all 
their energies in asserting and defending 
their rights. Honest, disinterested, and 
upright men, as they are ever most 
prompt to acknowledge and accord to 
others their just rights, so are they ever 
most determined and fearless in defend- 
ing their own. And when these rights 
26* 



306 A PRESENT 

are at stake, infringed, or endangered, 
they make no compromise with private 
interest, or personal risk in maintaining 
and securing them. In waging the holy 
war of liberty against oppression, they 
fear God, and they fear nothing else. 

Providence raised up in Col. Pickering 
and his associates in counsel and in arms, 
just such men as the exigencies of the 
arduous struggle required, — men, who 
united in the same individual the two 
characters of statesman and soldier, — 
men, who like the builders, that repaired 
the temple in Jerusalem, with one hand 
wrought in the rearing of the social edi- 
fice, and held in the other a weapon for 
its defence. There was, indeed, no want 
of heroic and intrepid men to wield the 
sword, — men strong to accomplish what 
others planned, — ready to put forth all 
their energies in the high places of the 
field, in the deadly breach, and the fury 
of battle, — men, who, when it was called 



FROM A PASTOR. 307 

for, poured out their blood like water. 
Your recollection can not fail to call up 
a long array of honored names of fallen 
heroes, and defenders of their country, — 
some of whom jeoparded their lives on 
the plains and heights by our seaboard, 
some in the distant frontiers, some min- 
gling their blood with the ocean wave, 
all fighting or falling where the needs of 
the country and the cause required the 
presence and the arm of the brave and 
the mighty. We their children, who 
have entered into their labors, and have 
received from them so goodly a heritage, 
the price of their toils and their blood, 
will not forget them. We will teach 
such lessons to our children, as shall 
prompt them to make their earliest pil- 
grimage to the high places of the field, 
where they fell, to pour the grateful tear 
and offer the pure incense of admiring 
and patriotic emulation over the hallowed 
spot, where their martyred dust reposes. 



308 A PRESENT 

But they were greater men, and entitled 
to a richer meed of glory, and of grati- 
tude from posterity, who tempered and 
wielded these instruments of resistance ; 
who with " such large discourse and ca- 
pability of godlike reason" looked calmly 
down through the vista of future years, 
and foresaw the results of their plans in 
the generations to come, — who, by an 
enlarged and prophetic calculation, wise- 
ly modeled and matured schemes and 
systems of government, whose bearings 
and effects will go on increasing for ages, 
and continue to produce improvement 
and happiness to the remotest posterity. 
Though Col. Pickering ranked high in 
the estimation of Washington for his mil- 
itary capacity and skill, yet it is not 
upon his services in the field, efficient 
and important, as they were, that his 
claims are chiefly founded to the venera- 
tion of his countrymen and of posterity. 
The spirit of a warrior, the genius of a 



FROM A PASTOR. 309 

conqueror is nothing strange to find in a 
good or a bad cause. Common ambition, 
the natural workings of pride and selfish- 
ness, in short, the common operation of 
the most common feelings of our nature, 
where they find an aspiring mind, de- 
cision of character and physical courage 
favored by circumstances, will produce 
Alexanders and Caesars, Cromwells 
and Napoleons, Wellingtons and Jack- 
sons. Though Colonel Pickering was a 
brave and active officer, and spared him- 
self from no fatigue or exposure in the 
discharge of the duties that belonged to 
him in the several important offices, 
which he held in the army from the com- 
mencement to the close of the revolu- 
tionary war, yet, as he has been often 
heard to affirm, he had no passion for 
military fame, no taste for what one of 
the ancients calls, " the transports of 
battle."* It was pure love of country, 



* " Gaudia certaminis.' 



310 A PRESENT 

his strong sense of duty, that made him a 
soldier, and not the vanity of command, 
or the dazzling meteor of military glory. 
While he, like many of his associates in 
arms, retained through life his military 
title, he will be remembered, not for his 
military achievements, but for his civil 
services and virtues. 

As a devoted and disinterested patriot, 
a wise and incorruptible statesman and 
legislator, he will stand forth distinguish- 
ed in that long array, — at the head of 
which Washington will stand while the 
world shall stand, — of those determined, 
calm, thinking, high minded and heroic 
men, whom providence raised up and 
brought on the stage, during our revolu- 
tion, to prove to mankind, as it would 
seem, that in the plan of the great Ruler 
of the world, that revolution w T as no 
common event, and w T as destined to have 
more than a common bearing upon the 
fortunes and condition of our race. We 
are witnesses, that it has produced a new 



FROM A. PASTOR. 311 

era in the political history of the civil- 
ized world. And we are sanguine in our 
belief, that it will gradually bring about 
an entire change in the political condi- 
tion of man over all the earth. We in- 
fer this, not only from what has already 
taken place, but from the principle, to 
which I have adverted, that the instru- 
ment is selected and fitted to the use, 
that is to be made of it. — We trust, it is 
no improper pride, that induces us to be- 
lieve, that no revolution, that has been 
recorded in history, has produced an 
equal number with that, which secured 
our independence, of calm, disinterested 
and deep thinking minds, of great and 
patriotic men, whose ambition prompted 
them only to deeds of virtuous glory. 

Though it is always delightful to dwell 
upon this topic, so grateful to our national 
feelings, yet we have neither the wish, 
nor the capacity to anticipate, the holiest 
and sublimest duty of the historian, 



312 A PRESENT 

We leave to him, who at some, we 
trust, no distant day, shall be raised up 
and qualified for the arduous and honor- 
able office of dispensing the due portion 
of renown, and assigning the appropri- 
ate place in history, to that numerous 
host of sages, warriors and legislators, 
who in their respective ranks and sepa- 
rate departments, so nobly co-operated in 
bringing stones, with which to build up 
the great temple of freedom. 

Our thoughts and affections are natur- 
ally drawn towards the venerable image 
of one of the most remarkable of these 
worthies, whom we have familiarly known, 
with whom we have conversed much and 
often, — of whose virtues we have all 
been witnesses, who lived among us a 
model of unaffected simplicity and god- 
ly sincerity, uniting rare endowments 
and extensive knowledge, the experience 
of a patriarch and the wisdom of a sage 
with a modesty, that seemed uncon- 



FROM A PASTOR. 313 

scious, that he differed at all from other 
men ; who had been associated with the 
highest in station and dignity, a counsel- 
or with the first in council, yet, in his 
deportment, seeming to forget that he 
had ever stood higher than the humblest 
of us, — who came up in company with 
us to the house of God and bowed in 
reverential worship with his brethren, 
an example to all of the devout respect 
due to the public institutions of religion, 
as he was of its practical requisitions in 
whatsoever things are just, true, honest, pure 
and of good report ; — who listened with 
a meek and candid docility to the minis- 
ters of Christ and expositors of chris- 
tian truth and duty, as though he were a 
learner of what they often felt he was 
much more competent to teach than they ; 
— who cultivated with his own hands the 
soil, which he had aided in council 
and fought by the side of Washington to 
defend ; — who left the cabinet and the 
27 



314 A PRESENT 

hall of legislation to guide the plough, 
and returned from guiding the plough to 
assist in guiding the councils of the na- 
tion ; — whom we have seen to the last 
active and interested in all that concern- 
ed the welfare of his country and his 
kind ; — who was spared to a good old 
age, to stand, it would seem, for the in- 
spection of a new generation, as a select 
specimen of the chosen race, the pecu- 
liar people, whom God ordained, as he 
did Moses of old, to conduct an oppressed 
nation to liberty and independence ; 
who, like that patriarch, enjoyed, as a 
reward of his singular activity and tem- 
perance, an immunity from the ordinary 
effects of time, — for at the age of 83 
his eye was not dim, nor his natural force 
abated ; and after only a short illness 
was called to join the patriots, legisla- 
tors, sages, and good men that have feared 
God and worked righteousness of every na- 
tion, who have gone before him to their 
rest and reward. 



FROM A PASTOR. 315 

The grave has now passed its hal- 
lowing influence over him, and he is 
removed beyond the reach and above 
the prejudiced and misdeeming com- 
ments of human passions. In the' great 
constellation of bright and clear and 
lofty minds, that have shed their ra- 
diance upon our country since Ave be- 
came a nation, this last and late setting 
luminary of New England, has been dis- 
tinguished by the peculiar purity of its 
light, and the undeviating uniformity and 
directness of its course, to the last ; while 
some others that rose higher, have 
moved in paths eccentric, retrograde, ob- 
lique, sometimes in opposition and some- 
times in conjunction, as they were influ- 
enced by the attraction of place and 
power. 

Col. Pickering, as he acted always 
from principle, was always the same, 
and all knew where to find him. 
They had only to look along the straight 
line of truth and honor and disinterest- 



316 A PRESENT 

edness and duty, and they were sure to 
trace the luminous track, he had marked 
out for himself; and from which no 
bribe of interest or power could seduce, 
no frown of official anger, no menace 
of popular clamor could move him 
knowingly to deviate. In those times, 
which tried men's souls, when they had 
to choose between a government yet to 
be formed, and one, to which they were 
bound by habit, and by associations like 
those which attach the child to the pa- 
rent, but which had then begun to exact 
the submission of slaves, by introducing 
into its legislative acts a principle of in- 
vidious and oppressive distinction be- 
tween its subjects here and those at 
home, Col. Pickering made his choice at 
once, and, as it has been said, against 
the current of his filial feelings, and the 
remonstrances of relatives, whom he re- 
vered. He was in those times, looked 
up to with entire confidence, by his fel- 



FROM A PASTOR. 317 

low citizens in this section, as the leader 
of their councils, and the organ of their 
sentiments. His disinterestedness and 
superiority to all selfish views were 
manifested in the outset of his political 
course, and were uniformly in accord- 
ance with the well known reply of his 
to the citizens of Boston, that the citi- 
zens of Salem were incapable of enrich- 
ing themselves by taking advantage of 
the privations inflicted by parliament 
upon their suffering brethren of the me- 
tropolis. He sought the common good 
and not his private weal in all the re- 
sponsible trusts confided to him, and in 
all the measures he proposed or advocat- 
ed, till his dismission by the second 
president from the head of the state de- 
partment, when he returned once more 
to the rank of a private citizen, with no 
other remuneration than the concious- 
ness of having done his duty, affording 
27* 



318 A PRESENT 

an illustration of the fine sentiment of 
the poet ; 

" And more true joy Marcellus exil'd feels 
" Than Caesar with a senate at his heels." 

For myself, I should deem myself rich- 
er in tracing my descent from one, who, 
like him, spent his best days in the ser- 
vice of his country, and came from that 
service with clean though empty hands, 
than to some titled lord, who left me heir 
of millions acquired at the public ex- 
pense. — " It is," says lord Bacon, " a 
poor center of man's actions, himself. 
It is right earth ; for that only stands 
fast upon its own center ; whereas, all 
things, that have affinity with the heav- 
ens, move upon the center of another, 
which they benefit." 

Col. Pickering, I have said, held on 
his way to the last in the same direct 
line of rectitude, truth and honesty ; 
and such an example of political integri- 
ty is of inestimable value to the people 



FROM A PASTOR. 319 

of a republic, like ours, who need some 
such standard of public virtue to refer 
to, as a common measure of character or 
desert in public men. Certain it is, that 
after his dismission from the department 
of state, he was left to walk compara- 
tively alone, deserted by most of the 
men, who were zealous and efficient 
fellow workers with him through the 
long struggle for independence. All in- 
deed acted in concert while the common 
prize was at stake. When it was won, 
the difference of character in the agents 
began to manifest itself in the division 
and distribution of the sovereignty ac- 
quired. When loosed from the old sov- 
ereign beyond the seas, a new sovereign, 
the people, was to be conciliated. Cut 
off from the old fountain of honors, of 
place and power, the new one was to be 
managed by those, who aspired to the 
dignities and emoluments, issuing from 
it. Here commenced the two grand po- 



320 A PRESENT 

litical divisions of the country under dis- 
tinctive names, — those, who acted with 
the same disinterested regard to the 
public welfare, with which they set out 
from the first, and who had the confi- 
dence of the people at the time ; and 
those, who coveted that confidence ex- 
clusively for themselves. Hence the 
charge of a leaning to England and a desire 
to introduce monarchy brought against 
the former by the latter, in order to de- 
tach the confidence of the people from 
their true friends and to transfer it to those, 
who avowed themselves the only genu- 
ine republicans and haters of monarchy. 
Hence all the futile attempts from that 
time to the present, to give something 
like plausibility to the charge. We al- 
lude to these matters simply to show, 
that the inflexible political integrity of 
Col. Pickering was the result of his mor- 
al integrity, — that his patriotism rested 
upon the immovable basis of his private 



FROM A PASTOR. 321 

virtues, and was disinterested in all its 
views and in all the measures which it 
prompted him to propose, as well as in 
all those proceeding from others, which 
it led him to advocate or incited him to 
oppose. He feared a base act, a com- 
promise of conscience with expediency, 
more than he feared poverty or death. — 
It is well known, that Col. Pickering 
and the friends, with whom he was asso- 
ciated in the administration of govern- 
ment till it fell into other hands, became 
afterwards a sort of proscribed class in 
the country. Desertion from this class 
was for a long time the only path to 
office. Political integrity was thus put 
to a test, which distinguished the gen- 
uine from the spurious. In such circum- 
stances according to lord Bacon, " who- 
ever is found variable, and changeth 
manifestly without manifest cause, giv- 
eth suspicion of corruption. " Instan- 
ces there were, not a few, of desertion 



322 A PRESENT 

to the party in power. They had what 
Col. Pickering, arid a bright catalogue of 
names, that will stand inscribed in histo- 
ry upon the same scroll with his, had 
not, — but what the leaders of the party 
in power had from the beginning, and 
what lord Bacon calls "wisdom for a 
man's self." " They are men," as he de- 
scribes them "that hold credit with their 
masters," — these may be sovereign prin- 
ces, or the sovereign people, — " because 
their study is but to please them, and 
profit themselves." He adds that, 
"this wisdom is in many branches there- 
of a depraved thing ; it is the wisdom 
of rats, that will be sure to leave a 
house sometime before it fall ; it is the 
wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the 
badger, who digged and made room for 
him ; it is the wisdom of crocodiles, that 
shed tears, when they would devour." 
How remote from all affinity to this spe- 
cies of wisdom was the ingenuous, trans- 



FROM A PASTOR. 3.23 

parent plainness of dealing, as well as 
of speech, and almost faulty indifference 
to private advantage, that marked the 
character of Col. Pickering, is known to 
every one. With the elder Cato, whom 
in several points he resembled, he 
thought it better to do well, though he 
missed the reward here, than to do evil 
and escape the present punishment of 
evil doing. He indeed enjoyed a nobler 
reward than all the outward distinctions 
and advantages, that were ever conferred 
upon its most successful votaries by that 
selfish wisdom of which I have spoken, 
and to which he was so greatly superior. 
He found in the esteem of the wise and 
good and in his own self respect and 
consciousness of upright intentions, an 
inward recompense and a peace, that the 
World could neither give nor take away. 
He approached as nearly perhaps as 
human infirmity permits, to that state of 
moral elevation and dignity, of which 



324 A PRESENT 

that profound observer of the true sour- 
ces of happiness, so often cited, has said 
that it "is certainly heaven upon earth, 
to have a man's mind move in charity, 
rest in providence, and turn upon the 
poles of truth." And of what this great 
man adds in the same paragraph the 
character of Col. Pickering furnishes a 
striking illustration, as contrasted with 
that of some of his distinguished cotem- 
poraries. " It will be acknowledged, 
even by those who practice it not, that 
clear round dealing is the honor of man's 
nature, and that mixture of falsehood is 
like alloy in coin of gold and silver ; 
which may make the metal work the 
better, but it debaseth it ; for these 
winding and crooked courses are the 
goings of the serpent, which goeth basely 
upon the belly and not upon the feet." 
It is only for mercenary purposes, let it 
be observed, that the precious metals 
are made " to work the better" when 



FROM A PASTOR. 325 

debased by a mixture of alloy. For 
sterling value, for strength, for beauty 
and durability, they will be found to be 
in their best estate, when unadulterated 
and pure. And such was the venerable 
patriot and sage of Essex, whose charac- 
ter was stamped with the clear impress 
of all the distinguishing virtues of the 
puritans, without their alloy, united with 
all the liberality of sentiment and en- 
largement of views, which have marked 
their more enlightened descendants upon 
the spot, where they first landed, where 
he was born and died, and will be re- 
membered, as one of the most illustrious 
of their posterity. 

Future generations will doubtless 
group the eminent men of our republic 
and name together those, who were dis- 
tinguished from the rest by prominent 
qualities, and virtues of peculiar and 
kindred excellence. For disinterested- 
ness, for dispassionate coolness, and 
28 



326 A PRESENT 

soundness of judgment, for scrupulous 
regard to truth and equity, for inflexible 
integrity, for singular purity of motive 
and fidelity in serving their country, 
Washington, Jay, Marshall, and Picker- 
ing will form a class by themselves. 
Many others of more brilliant powers 
and more illustrious fame for their writ- 
ings, their eloquence, or political sa- 
gacity, will figure together upon another 
perhaps more splendid page of the his- 
torian. Yet as time shall travel on 
towards the consummation of all things, 
it will drop by the way the name and 
memory of one and another of the prin- 
cipal actors in the great drama of our 
revolution. But the name and distinctive 
character of Pickering will be preserved 
and go down with unfading lustre to 
"the last syllable of recorded time," in 
company with those of Aristides, the 
Catos, Cincinnatus, Alfred, Washington, 
and a few more, whose virtue made them 



FROM A PASTOR. 327 

great and memorable, by shedding about 
them a light, that outshines, and will 
forever outshine the splendors of genius 
and station. And when only the calum- 
niated name of Federalism shall be 
known, — when, like some ancient tem- 
ple, which offers to the researches of the 
antiquary only some of the more solid 
and massy remains, its proportions and 
grandeur shall be inferred from a survey 
of such pillars and ornaments of the 
original fabric, as Washington, Marshall, 
Jay and Pickering, — it will need no 
other vindication of the principles on 
which it was based, — no better eulogy 
of the probity and patriotism of its found- 
ers and supporters. 

For the rest, let every youthful aspi- 
rant after fame be reminded by the exam- 
ple, we have been contemplating, that the 
only true glory is that which follows in 
the train of high-principled, active, un- 
swerving virtue. For fame, true fame, — 



328 A PRESENT FROM A PASTOR. 

such alone as the good man, who is gone 
to his immortal reward, desired and 
sought, as he would now say to each of 
us in the words of the poet, — to the young 
men of his country especially, — might 
his perfected spirit address us from the 
bright abode of his rest, — 

" Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 
Nor in the glistering foil, 
Set off to th' world, nor in broad rumor lies, 
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, 
And perfect witness of th" 1 all-seeing Judge ; 
As He pronounces lastly on each deed, 
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed." 



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